Haigh Anxiety: a psycho-comedy of errors

In an interview with NewScientist magazine, Imperial College professor of atmospheric physics Joanna Haigh scoffs at the idea that late 20th century warming could have been caused by the sun:

Haigh points out that the sun actually began dimming slightly in the mid-1980s, if we take an average over its 11-year cycle, so fewer GCRs should have been deflected from Earth and more Earth-cooling clouds should have formed. “If there were some way cosmic rays could be causing global climate change, it should have started getting colder after 1985.”

What she means is that the 20th century’s persistent high level of solar activity peaked in 1985. That is the estimate developed by Mike Lockwood and Claus Fröhlich. The actual peak was later (solar cycle 22, which ended in 1996, was stronger than cycle 21 by almost every measure) but set that aside. Who could possibly think that cooling should commence when forcings are at their peak, just because the very highest peak has been passed?

Haigh’s argument against solar warming was in response to my suggestion that one new sentence in the leaked Second Order Draft of AR5 is a “game changer.” That is the sentence where the authors admit strong evidence that some substantial mechanism of solar amplification must be at work. The only solar forcing in the IPCC’s computer models is Total Solar Irradiance so if some solar forcing beyond TSI is also at work then all their model results are wrong.

No, no, no, Haigh told the NewScientist, it is “the bloggers” who have it all wrong:

They’re misunderstanding, either deliberately or otherwise, what that sentence is meant to say.

Look whose accusing people of misunderstanding. This woman thinks that warming is driven, not by the level of the temperature forcing, but by the rate of change in the level of the forcing. When a forcing goes barely past its peak (solar cycle 22 nearly identical in magnitude to cycle 21), does that really create cooling? Haigh should try it at home: put a pot of water on a full burner for a minute then turn the burner down to medium high. Does she really think the pot will stop warming, or that it will actually start to cool?

“Deliberately or otherwise,” this is an astounding misunderstanding of the very most basic physics, and Haigh is not the only consensus scientist who is making this particular “mistake.” Hers is the stock answer that pretty much every “consensus” scientists gives when asked about the solar-warming hypothesis. I have collected examples from a dozen highly regarded scientists: Lockwood, Solanki, Forster, Muscheler, Benestad, and more. Not surprisingly, it turns out that they are all making some crucial unstated assumptions.

Solar warming and ocean equilibrium

To claim that the 20th century’s high level of solar forcing would only cause warming until some particular date such as 1970, or 1980, or 1987, one must be assuming that the oceans had equilibrated by that date to the ongoing high level of forcing. That’s just the definition of equilibrium. After a step up in forcing the system will continue to warm until equilibrium is reached.

When I asked these scientists if they were making an unstated assumption that the oceans must have equilibrated by 1980 say to whatever forcing effect high 20th century solar activity was having, almost all of them answered yes, each giving their own off-the-cuff rationale for this assumption, none of which stand up to the least bit of scrutiny. Isaac Held’s two-box model of ocean equilibration is better than Mike Lockwood’s one-box model, but just move to the next simplest model, a three-box model of ocean equilibration, and any idea that longer term forcing won’t cause longer term warming collapses.

The well mixed upper ocean layer (the top 100-200 meters) does equilibrate rapidly to a change in forcing, showing a response time of less than ten years, but that isn’t the end of the story. As the top layer warms up it transfers heat to the next deeper ocean layers. If the elevated forcing persists then these next deeper layers will continue to warm on the time scale of multiple decades to multiple centuries. This warming will reduce the temperature differential between the upper and deeper layers, causing there to be less and less heat loss over time from the upper to the deeper layers, causing the upper layer to continue to warm on the time scale of multiple decades to multiple centuries.

This accords with what we actually see. Since the 50 year absence of sunspots that coincided with the bottom of the Little Ice Age, 300 years of uneven warming have coincided with an uneven rise in solar activity. Any claim that these three centuries of natural warming had to have ended by a particular 20th century date (never mind right when solar activity was at its peak), is at the very least highly speculative. To claim that we can be confident that this is what happened is borderline insane.

Or maybe it’s that other thing that Joanna Haigh insinuates about. Maybe there is an element of deliberateness to this “misunderstanding” where scads of PhD scientists all pretend that warming is driven by the rate of change of the temperature forcing, not the level of the forcing. How else to blame late 20th century warming on human activity? Some rationale has to be given for why it can’t have been caused by the high level of solar activity that was still raging. Aha, what if temperature were driven by the trend in the forcing rather than the level of the forcing? That would do it. Let’s say that one. Let’s pretend that even peak forcing will cause cooling as soon as the trend in the forcing turns down.

It’s one psycho-drama or the other: either Haigh’s insinuations about dishonesty are projection, accusing others of what she and her cohorts are actually doing, or she’s just dumber than a box of rocks.

Haigh also channels Steven Sherwood, pretending that the highlighted sentence is just about GCR-cloud

The draft report acknowledges substantial evidence for some mechanism of solar amplification and lists Henrick Svensmark’s GCR-cloud theory as an example of one possible such mechanism (7-43 of the SOD):

Many empirical relationships have been reported between GCR or cosmogenic isotope archives and some aspects of the climate system (e.g., Bond et al., 2001; Dengel et al., 2009; Ram and Stolz, 1999). The forcing from changes in total solar irradiance alone does not seem to account for these observations, implying the existence of an amplifying mechanism such as the hypothesized GCR-cloud link.

Haigh claims that the evidence about cloud formation being induced by cosmic rays points to a weak mechanism, then simply ignores the report’s admission of substantial evidence that some such mechanism must be at work:

Haigh says that if Rawls had read a bit further, he would have realised that the report goes on to largely dismiss the evidence that cosmic rays have a significant effect. “They conclude there’s very little evidence that it has any effect,” she says.

Rawls says that if Haigh had read the actual sentence itself, she would have realized that it isn’t about galactic cosmic rays, but only mentions GCR-cloud as one possible solar amplifier.

Aussie climatologist Steven Sherwood did the same thing, claiming (very prematurely) that the evidence does not support GCR-cloud as a substantial mechanism of solar amplification, then pretending away the report’s admission of clear evidence that some substantial such mechanism is at work:

He says the idea that the chapter he authored confirms a greater role for solar and other cosmic rays in global warming is “ridiculous”.

“I’m sure you could go and read those paragraphs yourself and the summary of it and see that we conclude exactly the opposite – that this cosmic ray effect that the paragraph is discussing appears to be negligible,” he told PM.

As JoNova and I blogged last weekend, this ploy inverts the scientific method, using theory (dissatisfaction with one particular theory of solar amplification) as an excuse for ignoring the evidence for some mechanism of solar amplification. Using theory to dismiss evidence is pure, definitional anti-science. Unfortunately, NewScientist gives this slick anti-scientist the last word:

“The most interesting aspect of this little event is it reveals how deeply in denial the climate deniers are,” says Steven Sherwood of the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia – one of the lead authors of the chapter in question. “If they can look at a short section of a report and walk away believing it says the opposite of what it actually says, and if this spin can be uncritically echoed by very influential blogs, imagine how wildly they are misinterpreting the scientific evidence.”

Sherwood and Haigh are flat lying to the public about what a simple single sentence says, pretending the admission of strong evidence for some substantial mechanism of enhanced solar forcing was never made, then trusting sympathetic reporters and editors not to call them on it. This is why the report had to be made public. After my submitted comments showed how thoroughly the new sentence undercuts the entire report it was obvious that the consensoids who run the IPCC would take the sentence right back out, and here Sherwood and Haigh are already trying to do exactly that.

Too late, anti-scientists. Your humbug is on display for the whole world to see.

Rawls says that if Haigh had read the actual sentence itself, she would have realized that it isn’t about galactic cosmic rays, but only mentions GCR-cloud as one possible solar amplifier.
It is all about galactic cosmic rays. Even the subtitle of the section says so explicitly:
7.4.5.1 Correlations Between Cosmic Rays and Properties of Aerosols and Clouds
Joanna Haigh is absolutely correct.

According to the climate science view of heat transfer the hottest part of the day would always be exactly at noon and the hottest part of the year would coincide with the longest day when the daily an annual forcings peak.

I find it very discouraging that the “Skeptical Science Syndrome” has become so widespread. Next thing they will tell us is the world ended at midnight, was transported to another dimension, and now here we are just like it never happened. But the theory shows that it did.

I used to subscribe to New Scientist until I couldn’t take it anymore. Maybe they ARE the new scientists that forgo hard work, skepticism, curiosity, peer reviews, experimentation and the scientific method for government grants and computer models. There is (and always has been to some degree) the fight between those who really want to know and those who really want to believe.

lsvalgaard writes: “There has been no rise in solar activity the last 300 years:”

Yet the C14 and Be10 proxies for solar activity both show considerable increases in such activity, and reveal the Wolf, Spörer, Maunder and Dalton Grand Solar Minima that characterized the cooler climate of the Little Ice Age.

Of course both of those are dependent on how cosmic ray flux changes with solar activity.

Which leads one to examine the work of Svensmark and Kirkby on the effect of varying GCR on cloud formation…

An analysis of recent climate history shows that during the period 1870 to 1910, the global air temperatures and the global ocean surface temperatures both declined as the sunspot number declined. From 1910 to 1940 all three again moved up together. From 1940 to 1970’s, the global ocean surface temperatures declined as they entered their cool mode and wiped out the global surface temperatures rise from continuing solar sunspot increase. From 1980 to 2000 all three variables again moved up in unison.. During the last decade or 2000-2010, all three climate variables are again going down as global cooling again gets underway. This declining pattern is likely to continue until 2030 at least . It would appear that the decadal average yearly sunspot number level of about 50-30 seems to be the tipping point where any level below this figure causes global cooling and above this figure causes global warming unless ocean cycles happen to be out of sync and over ride any warming [ like 1950’s-1970’s] We have been running at an average yearly decadal sunspot number of 29.2 over the last 10 years. This low figure clearly explains why there has been no warming for the last 16 years and why instead we are starting to see global cooling like during the past the period of 1880-1910. and again 1790-1830.
The average yearly sun spot numbers during the Dalton Minimum decades [ 1790 to 1837], a period of much colder temperatures like the period 1880-1910 were 27.5, 16.5, 19.3 and 39 . So there is some convincing evidence that low solar sunspot numbers and declining global temperatures are directly linked.
There is a pattern of changing global temperatures that match the variation in solar sunspot numbers. The sun is emitting some additional energy [energy particle Z?] primarily during solar eruptions and major sunspot activity that we have not quantified . We need to step outside our current science and propose some new concepts
There was a recent study released showing a clear correlation between low activity of the sun and cooling of parts of European winters. I quote release from SCIENCE SOCIAL NETWORK below

Link found between cold European winters and solar activity
23 August 2012
AGU Release No. 12-39
For Immediate Release
WASHINGTON—Scientists have long suspected that the Sun’s 11-year cycle influences climate of certain regions on Earth. Yet records of average, seasonal temperatures do not date back far enough to confirm any patterns. Now, armed with a unique proxy, an international team of researchers show that unusually cold winters in Central Europe are related to low solar activity — when sunspot numbers are minimal. The freezing of Germany’s largest river, the Rhine, is the key.
Although the Earth’s surface overall continues to warm, the new analysis has revealed a correlation between periods of low activity of the Sun and of some cooling — on a limited, regional scale in Central Europe, along the Rhine.

I see Alec’s solar forcing theory running through several intriging recent posts:

1. Alec has been doing a great job of showing that the warming of the later 20th century could have been due to the continuing effects of the high solar activity of that century. He has demonstrated that a three level ocean model could explain why the high level of forcing of the first half of the century would continue to warm the climate during the second half of the century. The consensus scientists are trying to refute his theory and ignore it at the same time. And are failing.

2. The new finding (see next post on this blog) that climate change precedes tectonic activity could be explained by a third factor which causes both. The top candidate for such a factor is solar activity. I’m not the first to think of this. Piers Corbyn of weatheraction.com, has started including earthquake predictions in his solar activity based weather forecasts.

3. The December 7 posting on the Science & Public Policy website was a great paper by Nils-Axel Mörner of the University of Stockholm called “Sea Level is not Rising.” He discusses the fudging of the sea-level satellite data of this century, even though sea level stopped rising. The rise in sea level during that occurred during the 20th century could have been entirely due to the thermal expansion that goes with Alec’s theory that the ocean was acting as a heat sink during the 20th century.

Leif, can you please post the values for the earth’s current GAT versus the historical average. Also, can you post current atmospheric co2 versus the historic average? I would like to make the point that because earth is currently below the historical averages, you really can’t attribute global warming to man’s emissions, because the earth has averaged higher temperatures without a manmade influence.

To be honest, I am lost on the whole solar forcing thing. I see your point that you think it can’t have caused this warming but Mr. Rawls has quite a bit of evidence himself that it isn’t being valued correctly. Secondly, I see Ivar Giaver’s position also that you can’t distinguish between 288.0 kelvin and 288.8 kelvin.

I had a look at the ERA Interim Reanalysis data (of the ECMWF) on the KNMI Climate Explorer regarding the four surface energy fluxes (net downward shortwave radiation (pos.), net outgoing longwave radiation (neg.), latent heat transfer (neg.) and sensible heat transfer (neg.)) from 1979 to 2012. And got some very interesting results. It turns out that of the three negative fluxes (regulating the rate and magnitude of heat loss from the surface) only the change in latent heat transfer really matters. Also, they’ve all grown more negative (more efficient in ridding the surface of heat, that is) globally during the modern warming. As one would expect.

The key seems to be in the latent heat transfer. Not (at all) in surface thermal radiation.

Subtracting the sum of the three outgoing net fluxes from the incoming net solar flux gives this net surface energy balance curve for the Earth as a whole from 1979 to 2012:

Robustly positive all along, yet still trending unmistakably downward and now finally getting pretty close to perfect balance – maybe withing 3-5 years we’re there, crossing the line … The mean imbalance between incoming and outgoing (1979-2012) is +7,22 W/m^2 (which sounds like a lot).

This is still according to the ECMWF of course.

Just out of curiosity I made a running total on the data behind the plot above. It came out like this:

So the funny thing is, even though all of Earth’s net surface heat loss fluxes have steadily increased in strength/efficiency (becoming more negative) since 1979 (sensible heat by ~0.8 W/m^2, STR by 0.8-1 W/m^2 and latent heat by ~6 W/m^2, to a total of 7.6 – 7.8 W/m^2) and with the mean net solar input upon the global surface today pretty much equal to what it was in 1979, Earth has been accumulating a LOT of energy/heat. The global solar input has simply been larger the last 34 years than the output from Earth’s surface, the heat loss processes working hard to catch up. And that’s the funny bit. According to AGW theory, what would cause the energy imbalance is a DEcreasing of the total net upward heat flux from the surface. For instance, in a theoretical steady state, with solar IN (considered static) exactly balanced by IR+latent+sensible OUT, more GHGs would indirectly lessen the total heat flux from the surface, making it less negative (more positive) which would then create the observed positive imbalance. But this theoretical course of events is quite the opposite of what apparently actually happens in the real world. Here the IR flux, the sensible heat flux and the latent heat flux are all increasing as a function of surface temperature. Or should we say, as a function of the increasing difference/divergence between the surface temperature and that of the air layer directly above it. If the standard AGW hypothesis were right, the lapse rate should lift the mean temperature level off the ground with increasing concentration of GHGs in the atmosphere. That is to say, the incremental same-temperature levels would be situated gradually higher from the tropospheric mean emission height on down to the surface. This means that in the end, the layer of air just above the ground/sea would warm independently of the surface (a tiny bit) and would thereby in a snapshot reduce the temperature gradient between the air and the surface, reducing the total net heat flux from the ground/sea. For this to be the case, though, the temperature gap between the surface and the air layer adjacent to it must either be observed to DEcrease or to remain stable (they both warm in step). If this gap were rather observed to INcrease, this whole construct would crumble. Then the surface cannot be the follower. Then the surface is the driver. Which is what all common sense is telling us is the case. Look at these two graphs:

This is ICOADS SST vs. ICOADS Tair. The first graph covers a large chunk of the Pacific Ocean (30N-40S, 150E-100W). The second a significant part of the North Atlantic (62N-0, 60-15W). Watch how the SST trends are distinctively steeper than the Tair trends in both diagrams. How would an air layer colder than the surface and at the same time with a lower warming rate force the warming of the surface? It couldn’t. And it doesn’t. And it agrees with the ERA Interim Reanalysis data.

Finally, I did the same operation for the tropical Pacific fluxes as I did for the global ones. Here is the result, directly compared to the global (tropical Pacific (24N-24S, 120E-80W) (black), global (red)). From top to bottom – solar, sensible, IR and latent. Watch how much more positive the solar is in the Pacific and accordingly how much more negative the latent heat flux is. For the other two fluxes the difference seems inconsequential:

Dr Svalgaard is entirely wrong when he writes at December 21, 2012 at 7:32 am

“It is all about galactic cosmic rays. Even the subtitle of the section says so explicitly:
7.4.5.1 Correlations Between Cosmic Rays and Properties of Aerosols and Clouds”

Well, he has managed to read the title correctly but he has (somehow) failed to read the report or Alex Rawls quote from it in the original WUWT article.
“Compared to the First Order Draft, the SOD now adds the following sentence, indicated in bold (page 7-43, lines 1-5, emphasis added):

Many empirical relationships have been reported between GCR or cosmogenic isotope archives and some aspects of the climate system (e.g., Bond et al., 2001; Dengel et al., 2009; Ram and Stolz, 1999). The forcing from changes in total solar irradiance alone does not seem to account for these observations, implying the existence of an amplifying mechanism such as the hypothesized GCR-cloud link. We focus here on observed relationships between GCR and aerosol and cloud properties.”

Alex Rawls is talikng about the “amplifying mechanism” and the “Many empirical relationships”.
The draft IPCC report is talking about the “amplifying mechanism” and the “Many empirical relationships”.

Joanna Haigh is not.
Nor is Dr Svalgaard.
Curious, isn’t it?

In fact they are missing the point so entirely I will now ignore them until they catch up with the science.

As Prof Brian Cox says the laws of physics travel in one direction only, birth, life and eventually death hopefully for the rentseekers who live amongst us who have already eaten doom for breakfast, gloom for lunch and government grants for afternoon tea the prolonged temperature plateau will signify their last supper, its that time of year. Hopefully when they roll away the rock this time the greens will be beyond resurrection, unfortunately we will still be left with the bloody wind turbines and biomass to destroy the environment they purported their militant action was supposed to protect, seasonal greetings to all of the greens, not!

for a thorough discussion on the ERA Interim project. What comes plainly out when reading the document, is that the reanalysis model has overestimated the mean surface solar input:

“Due to a programming error in the calculation of incident solar radiation as a function of solar zenith angle, the global solar radiation in ERA-Interim is overestimated by about 2 W/m^2.”

and

“For solar irradiance, ERA-Interim uses a constant value of 1370 W/m^2 throughout, i.e. no account is taken of the solar cycle. Variations due to the varying distance between the Earth and the Sun are incorporated as described in Paltridge and Platt (1976).”

According to the newest satellite estimates, the mean solar irradiance is ~1361.7 W/m^2

The range in total irradiance between high and low within each cycle is ~1 W/m^2 with PMOD and ~1.5 (1-2) W/m^2 with ACRIM.

Disregarding the solar cycle amplitudes won’t affect the long term average (over several cycles). It will, however, affect the decadal variation. That means the graphs I’ve presented (based on ERA Interim) show less variation than reality. The 8.3 W/m^2 (1370-1361.7) difference between model assumption and real-world measurements is significant. It will probably overestimate the average energy input from the Sun at Earth’s global surface by ~1 W/m^2 (1361.7/8,3 = 164 W/m^2).

Dee et al. continue:

“The energy balance at the top of the atmosphere in ERA Interim has improved, with an estimated energy loss of 1.2 W/m^2 (7.4 W/m^2 for ERA 40). However, the energy balance at the surface boundary is poor in ERA Interim, with a global value of 6.9 W/m^2 (3.8 W/m^2 for ERA 40). This degradation occurs primarily over oceans and is associated with an increase in net solar radiation there. Over land the surface energy balance actually improves in ERA Interim, to 0.5 W/m^2 (1.3 W/m^2 for ERA 40).

Källberg (2011) suggests that the model clouds are the major contributor to the imbalance in surface energy, based on a correspondence between spin-up/spin-down of cloudiness and of the net energy fluxes.”

Based on the quotes above it seems justified adjusting the ERA Interim solar input down by 2+1= 3 W/m^2. This would reduce the global net energy imbalance 1979-2012 to 4,22 W/m^2 (second graph below), which actually sounds AND looks much more plausible than the original +7,22 (first graph below):

Note how in the lower graph (the ‘new and improved’ +4,22 one) we’re already very close to perfect balance and have been so for a few years, quite on the verge of crossing the line into negative territory.

Here are the running totals (accumulated energy) for the +7,22 and the +4,22 scenarios:

We’re obviously at the summit plateau.

What’s very interesting to observe, is how the evolution in Earth’s energy balance seems to follow the same pattern as ENSO East (NINO3.4) does. One might imagine an oceanic equilibrium line, across which the Earth system fluctuates in giant cycles. Below the equilibrium line the ocean’s heat loss is on average greater than the input from the Sun. There is a net loss of energy content. Above the equilibrium line the situation is reversed. There is a net builup of energy content. The main regulating mechanism seems to be the rate of evaporation from the ocean surface.

From the 70s to the 80s this equilibrium line was somehow crossed. The Earth system shifted from a negative to a positive balance. And here’s the take-home message: After the shift is completed, the trend starts falling at once, on its way back towards the equilibrium line. The initial divergence is gradually and steadily reduced. But the positive energy imbalance is still there all along. Energy is accumulating in the system, only at a slowing rate until it finally reaches zero. We’re very close now to that point.

Compare this to the MEI curve. What do we see?

A mighty upward shift in 1976/77. Before this, the curve is generally running below the zero line. After, the curve is generally above. But what about the trend? It starts falling directly from 1977 onwards. It’s basically negative all the way ’till today. Yet the ENSO phenomenon has made the world warmer and warmer during the same period. Since a few years back now the MEI/NINO3.4 curve fluctuates around the zero line, straddling the border between El Niño and La Niña dominance.

Which leads one to examine the work of Svensmark and Kirkby on the effect of varying GCR on cloud formation…

”

Weirdly when I look at cloudiness at Forbush events where GCR increase dramatically I can find no change in cloudiness. When I challenge believers in Svensmark to state a testable hypothesis, they all go silent. Seems they want to claim an effect but not define a test for it.

“What she means is that the 20th century’s persistent high level of solar activity peaked in 1985… Who could possibly think that cooling should commence when forcings are at their peak, just because the very highest peak has been passed?”

I have not read the full article, but doubtr that the summary is a fair reflection of her argument since if it were, then the warming/CO2 argument would fail. Who would have tjought that temperatures stall or even fall when CO2 forcing is at its post industrial peak! Must be something wrong there!!

The problem is that nobody truly knows what is going on, nor why and it appears that climate scientists (and I use that term loosely since there appears to be little true science conducted) are not sufficiently truthful to admit that they do not properly understand matters and that the data is either defective or insufficient from which to draw any firm conclusions.

Camburn says:
December 21, 2012 at 7:49 amCO2 300 years ago did not show any appreciable rise, yet the temperatures did.
CO2 the last 300 years has risen considerably as have temperatures…
This is one of the pillars of AGW, no?

“The most interesting aspect of this little event is it reveals how deeply in denial the climate deniers are,” says Steven Sherwood of the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia – one of the lead authors of the chapter in question.

It seems to me it is not the sceptics you are “in denial”.

Their scam is falling apart around them yet they carrying lying and cheating as though it was not already too late. #

You can con people once because many start by assuming good faith . Once you have called out, telling further more ridiculous lies won’t make people listen again.

herkimer says:
December 21, 2012 at 8:00 amAn analysis of recent climate history shows that during the period 1870 to 1910, the global air temperatures and the global ocean surface temperatures both declined as the sunspot number declined. From 1910 to 1940 all three again moved up together. From 1940 to 1970’s, the global ocean surface temperatures declined as they entered their cool mode and wiped out the global surface temperatures rise from continuing solar sunspot increase. From 1980 to 2000 all three variables again moved up in unison.. During the last decade or 2000-2010, all three climate variables are again going down as global cooling again gets underway.
What happened to the ocean thermal inertia that Alec Rawls stress to much?

Amplification is not the only mechanism for solar activity variation to effect climate more than TSI variation would suggest. Component distribution could be the variation that is most critical to climate. For example, a typical acid copper plating solution has over a dozen organic components. The TOC (total organic carbon) parameter does not reflect the operation of the bath well because it’s the distribution or balance of the components that are critical, not just the total. The plating bath could be operating well or not at identical TOC levels. Similarly, TSI is merely the total and does not reflect the distribution of the components of solar output.

Which tells us all that there is something happening concerning climate that is not yet recognized.
CO2 300 years ago did not show any appreciable rise, yet the temperatures did.

Thank you Dr. Svalgaard.

Either this is taken out of context, or the “Dr.” is NOT A CLEAR THINKER!!!

WHAT would QUANTIFY SOLAR ACTIVITY FOR 300 years??? Some of the alledged isotope connections are, frankly, “stuff and nonsense”. In terms of records, Sunspots is all we have. And DUE to the inaccuracies of counting and identification, there are rather large error bars there too.

I’m really hoping this is taken out of context, because if it isn’t it throws a negative light on Dr. L.S.’s potificating proclaimations…

If cloud formation is affected by GCR’s, CERN’s “cloud” study, using that big, very elaborate cloud chamber in Switzerland failed to identify it using CERN’s original atmospheric trace gases in those first inconclusive tests.. CERN suggested at the time that future experiments would be conducted to evaluate possible effects of organic gases as perhaps produced by trees. Has there been any clarification or new report about this from CERN?

M Courtney says:
December 21, 2012 at 8:06 am“Many empirical relationships have been reported between GCR or cosmogenic isotope archives and some aspects of the climate system (e.g., Bond et al., 2001; Dengel et al., 2009; Ram and Stolz, 1999). The forcing from changes in total solar irradiance alone does not seem to account for these observations, implying the existence of an amplifying mechanism such as the hypothesized GCR-cloud link.”
The sentence talks about ‘these’ observations, that is: ‘the relationships reported between GCR or cosmogenic isotope achives [controlled partly by GCRs]…’ and points out that TSI does not seem to account for these observations, implying … hypothesized GRS-clout link’ and then goes on to state ‘these results were not corroborated by other studies who found no statistically significant links between GCR and clouds at the global scale (Čalogović et al., 2010; Kristjánsson et al., 2008; Laken and Čalogović, 2011).’ ending with ‘Although there is some evidence that ionization from cosmic rays may enhance aerosol nucleation in the free troposphere, there is medium evidence and high agreement that the cosmic ray-ionization mechanism is too weak to influence global concentrations of CCN or their change over the last century or during a solar cycle in any climatically significant way. The lack of trend in the cosmic ray intensity over the last 50 years (Agee et al., 2012; McCracken and Beer, 2007) provides another strong argument against the hypothesis of a major contribution of cosmic rays to ongoing climate change.’
What can be clearer than that? [independently of what one otherwise believes]. The statement is not a ‘game changer’ in any way, especially since its author says that Rawls have misinterpreted it.

Today being Winter Solstice and the high temps in Denver being significantly colder than they were on the Summer Solstice, I’d believe minor fluctuations in the Sun’s output could have minor fluctuations in our temps. After all, we’re how much closer in our orbit to the sun right now than Summer Solstice? Seeing how lessening the time exposed to the sun and the change of Sun’s angle over the horizon drops the daily temp between 30 and 40 degrees, the temperature changes really do seem to be related to the sun.

MarkW says:
December 21, 2012 at 8:36 am“Just a quick question from a simple farmer… How long does it take for the sun’s shielding effect against GCRs to reach the outer limits of the heliosphere?”
I’ve been told that it is around 6 months.
Depending on what you call the ‘heliosphere’. If we use the ‘termination shock’ at 110 AU as the limit, then since the solar wind goes 1 AU in 4 days [on average], the time would be 110*4 days ~ 14 months

The satellite record suggests that there has been no CO2 induced warming these past 33 years; flat from 79 to 97, and flat from 99 to 21012 with just a step change around the super El Nino of 1998. Unless that El Nino was somehow caused by CO2 (which to date no one has put forward a plausible mechanism), there is no CO2/warming signal in the satellite data. Materially, we have more than the so called magic 17 years, we have 33 years without a steady rise in temperature which according to the theory would follow the steady rise in anthropogenic CO2 if CO2 was a primary driver.

Whilst the satellite data set is far from perfect (and far from long enough), it is the best quality data that we have. Just consideration of this record would suggest that one should be vary wary that we understand forcings and what controls the global temperature.

MarkW says:
December 21, 2012 at 8:28 am“Haigh points out that the sun actually began dimming slightly in the mid-1980s”
I’m not aware of any theory that links the suns visible light output with the deflecting of GCRs.
Then listen up: the variation of the total radiant output of the Sun [TSI] is caused by variations in the solar magnetic field, which does have a role deflecting GCRs when brought out in space by the solar wind.

lsvalgaard said
“CO2 the last 300 years has risen considerably as have temperatures…”
Misleading as usual.
CO2 has been rising for the last 60 years (debatable whether considerably is correct) but prior to that is was largely constant.
It is interesting that other AGW people use temperature rises before CO2 increases as proof (or pillars) of AGW.

What is going to count is what the various IPCC AR5 authors do with the third draft. Then we will know whether they are going to behave like scientists or deliquent teenagers. I wonder whether they will make the third draft public themselves, or wait for someone else to leak it.

“This woman thinks that warming is driven, not by the level of the temperature forcing, but by the rate of change in the level of the forcing. When a forcing goes barely past its peak (solar cycle 22 nearly identical in magnitude to cycle 21), does that really create cooling? “
Well, everybody knows that at the longest day of the year, the 21st of June, is also the warmest day of the year, and from then on starts cooling.

DirkH says:
December 21, 2012 at 8:45 amLeif surely means TSI when he says solar activity; but C14 production did change (it seems).
I mean the Sun’s magnetic field [which controls both TSI and the GCR flux observed at Earth].
Check slides 30 and 31 of http://www.leif.org/research/Solar-Activity-Past-Present-and-Future-Notes.pdf
30: Galactic Cosmic Rays [GCRs] produce by spallation of Oxygen and Nitrogen radioactive nuclei in the Earth’s atmosphere. 10Beryllium [2 oz total global yearly production] and 14Carbon [17 pounds] eventually enter reservoirs at ground level [ice cores and tree rings]. From those, researchers have sought to deduce the solar activity responsible for the solar cycle modulation of GCRs. The observable is really the deposition rate rather than the production rate. The deposition is also controlled by the strength of the Earth’s magnetic field, and by circulation of air and moisture [i.e. by climate]. The effects of these factors are difficult to remove and the influence of the unknown [but guessed at] flux outside the Heliosphere is not well-known. Nevertheless, progressis being made and preliminary results exist for the past ~10,000 years.
The higher flux at solar Grand Minima stands out, but there are problems. Solar activity at present is on par with what it was a century ago, yet the cosmic rays flux back then seems to announce a grand minimum [marked G] which we are not seeing repeated now.
31: It is often assumed that the GCR production, M, is controlled by the HMF B [upper panel] following a relation of the form M ~1/ B^n where n is of the order of 2. Since [absolute instrument] neutron monitors were introduced in the 1950s this relation has worked reasonably well [lower panel]. The data from [relative instrument] ion chambers from the 1930s to early 1950s have been spliced to the neutron monitor data, but do not seem to have the same calibration relative to HMF B [oval in lower panel]. This discrepancy feeds into the calibration of the entire 9,300 years before the present and makes the record difficult to interpret. Resolution of this problem is a high-priority ongoing research effort [ISSI workshop 233, co-chaired by me] and the end is not yet in sight.

Did she think we all forgot the mid-1990s extremely active solar cycle that coincided with the 1998 surface temperature measure? Yes she did. Scientists like politicians have become adepts at rewriting history. Even near time events. Is this delusion or deceit?

– throughout a 24 hour period (temperature lag behind solar insolation by up to 3 hours or an accumulation rate of 0.007 joules/m2/second));
– over the annual seasonal cycle (temperatures lag behind solar insolation by 35 days on Land and up to 82 days for mid-high latitude oceans – similar to the daily rate); and,
– over an 11 year solar cycle (tough to say what those numbers are);

Do we expect these accumulation / discharge rates to average out to exactly 0.00000000 joules/m2/second over a longer period of time, say 50 years. Because it has to be lower than this number above to not result in slowly increasing/decreasing temperatures.

“This woman thinks that warming is driven, not by the level of the temperature forcing, but by the rate of change in the level of the forcing.”

The irony is that if she even understood the basics of meteorology she could not misunderstand this.

I teach a short meteorology and world climate course for future airline pilots. It is only about 50 hours of classroom tuition, starting with an assumption of no knowledge, so this is quite a basic course. One of the things they need to know is the warmest times of the diurnal an annual temperature cycles on land and at sea.

So they know that the coldest part of the day is shortly after sunrise, and the warmest part is in mid afternoon. They know that the warmest month is just after summer solstice, July in the Northern hemisphere, and the coldest just after winter solstice. They know that the maximums and minima are slightly later at sea, where the response to warming and cooling is slower.

Simply knowing this, and the reasons why, Haigh could not make the error she does make. It is the first thing I thought of when I read what she had said. By her logic the coolest time of day would be at sunrise, and the warmest midday; the land and sea would be warmest at the summer solstice, coolest at the winter solstice. We all know this is not true; even someone with no meteorological education knows that July and even August tend to be warmer than the 21 June in the Northern hemisphere.

So does she lack the conceptual intelligence to connect this to longer-term climate trends? Is she less well-informed than my ATPL students? Or is she dishonest, genuinely believing the sun is not responsible but trying to rule it out but by a simple but false argument because she has no other argument to give to support her belief? Is she trying to win the debate, rather than find the truth, and so using an argument she knows is wrong?

pat says:
December 21, 2012 at 9:10 amDid she think we all forgot the mid-1990s extremely active solar cycle that coincided with the 1998 surface temperature measure?
‘Mid-1990s’ [1996] was a solar MINIMUM and the cycle that peaked in 2000 was lower than the previous two cycles, so she did not forget anything.

Your comments on this thread leave readers with the impression that, as far as this topic is concerned, your science consists of two things: monitoring of TSI and monitoring of GCRs. You seem to report that there has been no change in either and, for that reason, the topic of the sun’s influence on the earth is closed.

Surely, you do not really mean to create this impression. Surely, you do not mean to leave readers with the impression that your goal is to end discussion of the matters raised by Rawls.

You are missing Dr. Svalgaard’s point in that temps DID rise and CO2 didn’t. Yet, CO2 is a pillar of AGW……and apparently a very very in fact……VERY new pillar that does not bear up when looked at robustly.

ConfusedPhoton says:“CO2 the last 300 years has risen considerably as have temperatures…”
Misleading as usual.
Not at all, CO2 is now considerable higher than it was 300 years ago as is temperature. You should not take that as showing that CO2 is the reason for the temperature rise.

Temps lags sun exposure. For example, today is Winter Solstice but our coldest temps aren’t typically until late January/early February. Same with the Summer Solstice. Longest day is June 21st but warmest temps are late July through early August. An easy way to see is to go to weather.com (looking at temps rather than propaganda) and look at the average for your city. For Denver:

July clearly shows to be the warmest “Average” and January shows to be the coldest “Average”.
The point is, there is almost nothing with an instantaneous reflection of change. Almost everything lags something else.

Max Hugoson says:
December 21, 2012 at 8:26 amWHAT would QUANTIFY SOLAR ACTIVITY FOR 300 years??? Some of the alledged isotope connections are, frankly, “stuff and nonsense”. In terms of records, Sunspots is all we have. And DUE to the inaccuracies of counting and identification, there are rather large error bars there too.
This argument cuts both ways. If sunspots are unreliable, they cannot be used to argue that solar activity has risen the past 300 years. Recent work on the sunspot record going back to original sources has shown that the sunspot record is indeed incorrect, but also that it is possible to correct for the discrepancies http://ssnworkshop.wikia.com/wiki/Home

I’ve heard you and others make this assertion before and have no reason to doubt what you say. Indeed Svensmark and co-workers say the same thing. I’m just beginning to get interested in the GCR-climate link from the point of view of understanding the faint sun paradox and early glaciation on Earth and have come across an interesting thesis by Torsten Bondo (2009): Influence of cosmic radiation on aerosol and cloud formation over short time periods. Svensmark is the thesis advisor. My very brief skimming of this work is that the magnitude of a Forbush events effect on ionisation is not directly related to the impact on the neutron monitor count. They’ve calculated a rank order of Forbush events based on ionisation and find a link with cloudiness. I’m only reporting what is in the abstract (copied below). I don’t want to discount the GCR-climate link, certainly not till I have understood this work.

ABSTRACT
This thesis describes a study of Forbush decrease events. These are rapid decreases in the cosmic ray intensity in the Earth’s atmosphere, which are caused by a temporary increased magnetic shielding at Earth due to solar eruptions. The aim is to investigate how these transient ionization phenomena in the atmosphere affect aerosol and cloud creation and whether it is realistic to observe Forbush decrease events in climate data.
The thesis involves a theoretical examination of the ionization caused by Forbush decreases based on studies of hourly neutron monitor data and muon telescope data as proxies for cosmic rays. A list of the ionization change in the troposphere of the strongest Forbush de- creases as compared to the ionization change over the solar cycle is calculated and indicates that only a few events induce ionization changes comparable to the solar cycle.
Studies of recently available high resolution satellite data and aerosol ground based mea- surements are presented. Here it is observed that significant decreases in the angstrom exponent from AERONET aerosols and cloud liquid water from satellites take place after the largest Forbush decreases. The timescales of this indicate that the ionization decrease caused by the Forbush decreases diminishes the aerosol nucleation rate which, over time, affects first cloud condensation nuclei size aerosols and then clouds.
As a part of the thesis, a model of the growth of neutral sulfuric acid aerosols has been developed. Assuming an initial distribution of stable nucleated clusters, the model takes condensation and coagulation into account and includes various loss mechanisms. This model is used to investigate the growth of aerosols into cloud condensation nuclei size particles and to study the influence of nucleation rates and background vapour gas con- centration on aerosol and cloud optical properties over short time. The model is used to examine experimental efforts at DTU Space on the role of ions in nucleation, as well as it is used to investigate observational data on Forbush decreases in aerosols. The model con- firms the existence of decreases in angstrom exponents observed in AERONET aerosol data under assumption of realistic ion induced nucleation rates.
The work presented in the thesis indicate that the largest Forbush decreases affect aerosol formation and in turn cloud cover on a global scale.

Key Points
* The NAO was stronger and the baroclinity steeper in 1878–1944 than in 1944–2008
* Long-term trends in the NAO Index are linked to the trend in sunspot number
* Solar activity relates to North Atlantic Ocean and atmosphere trends…

Many comments on blogs make some sort of claim regarding the sun and Earth’s climate. Fair enough. Insofar as the claims are widely different it is, at this point, watchful waiting seems a good strategy for those of us not involved in real research. Leif (posting as lsvalgaard) shows a lack of change in solar activity thereby inciting folks to search for variable X (Sun related) that will explain variable Y (Earth related). So far so good (despite some poor reading comprehension and thought processes).

Comments to this current post include a quote, in part: Although the Earth’s surface overall continues to warm, the new analysis has revealed a correlation between periods of low activity of the Sun and of some cooling — on a limited, regional scale in Central Europe, along the Rhine.

. . . and the issues of Ps and Qs, false certainty and such, the part about “on a limited, regional scale in Central Europe, along the Rhine”, makes me wonder if searchers for Sun/Earth (S/E) correlations have not committed the same felony. One can search for any number of measures of the Sun and any number of weather changes on Earth (cooling along the Rhine?) and without any plausible mechanism get a fit, of sorts, one to another. Next, create a title with global warming or climate change in it and a publication is assured. Can an unruly argument be far behind?

Theo Goodwin says:
December 21, 2012 at 9:19 amSurely, you do not mean to leave readers with the impression that your goal is to end discussion of the matters raised by Rawls.
People will discuss what they want. I’m pointing out that in my opinion Rawls is not correct in claiming ‘Haigh is flat out lying’.

‘Beryllium 10 in the ice core is made by cosmic rays, but 40,000 year ago, the magnetic field zero’d out for a millennium or so and the cosmic rays came streaming in and the climate ignores it. It’s just about that simple, the cosmic rays didn’t do enough to leave a record. So it’s a fine tuning knob for the climate at best!’

If I remember correctly didn’t Svensmark point out a schoolboy error in using 11 year averages when this is known to give errant results? He argued that using the actual cycle time gives different results.

Key Points
* Anomalously high sea level pressure in the South Pacific at solar peaks
* The SPCZ is poleward shifted across the entire South Pacific at solar peaks
* The signal in SLP in the South Pacific for solar peaks is different from La Nina

….The solar influence is seen as above normal SLP in the sub-Arctic Pacific, as found previously, and as corresponding positive SLP anomalies in the sub-Antarctic Pacific, as shown here for the first time. These SLP anomalies are associated with previously documented signals at sunspot maxima of greater ocean upwelling and cooling along the Pacific equator, and a poleward extension of the tropical convergence zones in both hemispheres….

“Haigh should try it at home: put a pot of water on a full burner for a minute then turn the burner down to medium high. Does she really think the pot will stop warming, or that it will actually start to cool?”

If it is an electric stove and the controls are “properly adjusted” it can work like that. Under those circumstances ordinary people would call for a repairman.

Svalgaard
What happened to the ocean thermal inertia that Alec Rawls stress to much?
Leif, my observation is that the oceans have their own cycles and inertia,which is somewhat different and lagged from solar sunspot cycles .Each of the oceans seem to have their own cycle to some degree but they clearly interact too.The solar sunspot cycle affects the oceans but its effect is recognizable in a lagged timing because of its own flywheel.When the ocean cycles happen to be in sync with the sunspot cycle , there is more cooling[ like 1880-1910 or more warming like 1910-1940’s. The ocean amplification effect[ cooling or warming] gets even greater when the Atlantic Ocean temperatures [AMO] is also in sync with the global SST pattern, primarily the Pacific like 1900-1925 and again 1964-1995. This fact becomes clear when you see that in 1877-78 we had one of the largest El Ninos ever and it happened during a solar minimum and again during the Maunder Minimum when the sunspot cycle was at a very low level, but the ocean temperatures were rising.

You have repeated this assertion many times. But if the Zurich Sunspot numbers are so wrong, as you say, then why do the completely independent Greenwich Sunspot counts agree with them?

As you can see in this graph, the Greenwich Sunspot count also shows a clear increase in activity since the LIA, just like the Zurich count that your are disputing. So why is this Greenwich count (also) wrong, if it was made by different observers with different methodology?

Carter says:
December 21, 2012 at 9:47 am‘Beryllium 10 in the ice core is made by cosmic rays, but 40,000 year ago, the magnetic field zero’d out for a millennium or so and the cosmic rays came streaming in and the climate ignores it. It’s just about that simple, the cosmic rays didn’t do enough to leave a record.
Indeed

It is all about whatever is responsible for the “Many empirical relationships have been reported between GCR or cosmogenic isotope archives and some aspects of the climate system …”

Among other things, that could be:

1. Change in GCR/cosmic isotopes causing changes in the climate system.
2. Change in some other solar factor causing changes in GCR/cosmic isotopes and the climate system.
3. Change in some non-solar factor causing changes in GCR/cosmic isotopes and the climate system.

GCR/clouds is but one proposed mechanism for #1 on that non-exhaustive list.

Joanna Haigh is absolutely correct.

No. Joanna Haigh is absolutely dishonest, using a false argument to dismiss GCR/cloud, and then pretending that GCR/cloud was all the IPCC statement of evidence was about, in order to dismiss the statement. No. GCR is only part of what that statement is about.

Alec is absolutely correct. IPCC identifies that something other than TSI is likely happening, dismisses the notion that one thing is happening, and concludes that nothing is happening. This is false reasoning.

The lack of a strong climate response to the Laschamp event has been cited several times as an argument against the GCR-climate link. I’ve given this some thought in the past and am not particularly surprised that the Laschamp event doesn’t provoke a strong climatic response. 40,000 years ago significant parts of the northern hemisphere were covered in ice with a very large impact on planetary albedo. The dominant response mode hypothesised in the GCR-climate link is through albedo associated with increased cloudiness. If the planetary albedo is already very much increased then an increased GCR flux may not have much more effect on an already high albedo.

“It’s just about that simple, the cosmic raysAGW didn’t do enough to leave a record. So it’s a fine tuning knob for the climate at best!”

Fixed it for you, Carter. The climate is ignoring AGW, as it always has. All you were ever seeing was a short term, coincidental correlation from around 1980 – 1998. But if you believe that you have testable, empirical scientific evidence proving AGW, post it here. Keep in mind that peer reviewed papers, models, and conjectures do not constitute scientific evidence.

And don’t waste your time posting your silly video propaganda. Learn to think and speak for yourself for a change.

“Weirdly when I look at cloudiness at Forbush events where GCR increase dramatically I can find no change in cloudiness. When I challenge believers in Svensmark to state a testable hypothesis, they all go silent. Seems they want to claim an effect but not define a test for it.

Perhaps not all readers are aware of the Wilson Cloud Chamber, invented 100 years ago, which detects subatomic particles by the creation of a streak of cloud through the chamber caused by water droplets condensing in the wake of particle track. GCRs were detected along with other particles using the chamber. (Let us hope Svensmark and colleagues gave credit to Wilson for the idea.) How’s that for a testable hypothesis? Much more convincing than the curve fitting “evidence” of CO2 goes up, temp goes up; ladies’ hemlines go up, copper prices go up and the like.

Perhaps the manifestation of the GCR cloud streaks is more subtle and not easily seen in satelite imagery. There can be no question, I would hope, that GCRs do create a water droplet track. To be easily visible it would require high humidity. It would also be confounded somewhat by the presence of already formed clouds nucleated by other aerosols. Perhaps the trains of water droplets occur from the top to the bottom of the atmosphere creating a more diffuse, diaphanous cloudiness.

Also, none other than William Herschel, Astronomer Royal who noted the relationship between sunspot numbers and the price of wheat! Presumably low numbers-high prices. “He became famous for his discovery of the planet Uranus, along with two of its major moons (Titania and Oberon), and also discovered two moons of Saturn. In addition, he was the first person to discover the existence of infrared radiation. He is known, as well, for the twenty-four symphonies that he composed.” (from Wikipedia) A comparison of the giants of science with today’s fare in climate science (and apparently physics – Haigh, Sherwood, etc) is most telling.

As you can see in this graph, the Greenwich Sunspot count also shows a clear increase in activity since the LIA
The LIA was not in 1874. See slide 8 of the above link. Activity has a roughly 100 year ‘cycle’ and your plot starts at a low cycle, as we having right now.

As you can see in this graph, the Greenwich Sunspot count also shows a clear increase in activity since the LIA
The LIA was not in 1874. See slide 8 of the above link. Activity has a roughly 100 year ‘cycle’ of which we had had three the last 300 years and your plot starts at a low cycle, as we having right now.

Steven Mosher says:
December 21, 2012 at 8:17 am
“When I challenge believers in Svensmark to state a testable hypothesis, they all go silent.”

I think it has more to do with the fractured way Mr. Mosher sometimes communicates with incomplete/cryptic commentary on blogs. People often can’t figure out what he’s saying. I sure can’t sometimes. Thats’ not intended to be derogatory, only pointing out that better communications are needed if cogent responses are expected.

The spoken word has much inflection that adds communication, whereas the Internet written word, rattled off as a short comment, basically leaves it in a confused or incomplete comprehension state. The onus is on the commenter to be clear and precise. See Dr. Robert Brown’s comments for example.

When I was a student of physics at Imperial many years ago, it was a renowned college, part of the University of London. Since then it has become a separate organisation and has become commercialised. It now is prepared to employ second and third rate academics as long as they bring in the money (as per the Grantham Institute with its millions). As long as Grantham is pulling the strings, the academic “scientists” will defend the BS climate change mantra to the bitter end (which doesn’t seem far off now). Hopefully

JJ says:
December 21, 2012 at 10:13 amAlec is absolutely correct. IPCC identifies that something other than TSI is likely happening, dismisses the notion that one thing is happening, and concludes that nothing is happening. This is false reasoning.
No, IPCC says that TSI does not explain the reported correlations between GCRs and climate [without acknowledging that those correlations are even valid] and then goes on the examine the GCR-cloud link and concludes that that doesn’t work:
“7.4.5.1 Correlations Between Cosmic Rays and Properties of Aerosols and Clouds
Many empirical relationships have been reported between GCR or cosmogenic isotope archives and some aspects of the climate system (e.g., Bond et al., 2001; Dengel et al., 2009; Ram and Stolz, 1999). The forcing from changes in total solar irradiance alone does not seem to account for these observations, implying the existence of an amplifying mechanism such as the hypothesized GCR-cloud link.” [my bold: ‘these’ clearly refers to the ‘reported correlations between GCRs and climate’ and not to anything else]

Here is some interesting sunspot number history
It would appear that the decadal average yearly sunspot number level of about 30-50 seems to be the tipping point where levels below this range seems to cause global cooling and above this figure causes global warming unless ocean cycles happen to be out of sync and over ride any warming or cooling

DURING DALTON MINIMUM
The average yearly sun spot numbers during the Dalton Minimum decades [ 1790 to 1837], a period of much colder temperatures like the period 1880-1910 were 27.5, 16.5, 19.3 and 39 . So there is some convincing evidence that low decadal solar sunspot numbers and declining global temperatures are directly linked.

One can y see that there is a common link between the period of Dalton Minimum, the period 1880-1910 and our current period of 2000-2012 to 2030. It is a decadal sunspot number below 30-50 range and the temperatures were or are cooling in each case.

But it has the usual get Published Free Card.“….But these are still far too small to create clouds…..”

…. it was premature to conclude that cosmic rays had a significant influence on cloud formation and the climate: “Anyone who believes that we see an enhancement of clouds through cosmic rays is moving too fast,” he told swissinfo.ch.

The international team of scientists from 18 institutes found that while cosmic rays “significantly enhanced” the formation of aerosol particles in the mid-troposphere and above, which could grow into the seeds for clouds, in the lower atmosphere additional vapours such as ammonia are required.

The research also revealed that the chemicals believed to seed clouds – sulphuric acid, water and ammonia – even with cosmic ray enhancement are not sufficient to explain atmospheric observations of aerosol formation. Additional vapours of organic or human origin may play a far more important role in cloud formation than suspected….

Unfortunately as Dr. Zbigniew Jaworowski proved, stepping on the toes of the money men and power grabbers will get you fired.

…in 1994 Dr. Jaworowski, together with a team from the Norwegian Institute for Energy Technics, proposed a research project…

The prospective sponsors of the research refused to fund it, claiming the research would be “immoral” if it served to undermine the foundations of climate research.

The refusal did not come as a surprise. Several years earlier, in a peer-reviewed article published by the Norwegian Polar Institute, Dr. Jaworowski criticized the methods by which CO2 levels were ascertained from ice cores, and cast doubt on the global-warming hypothesis. The institute's director, while agreeing to publish his article, also warned Dr. Jaworowski that "this is not the way one gets research projects." Once published, the institute came under fire, especially since the report soon sold out and was reprinted. Said one prominent critic, "this paper puts the Norsk Polarinstitutt in disrepute." Although none of the critics faulted Dr. Jaworowski’s science, the institute nevertheless fired him to maintain its access to funding.

Very few scientists are willing to buck the ‘system’ just for the sake of honesty because it gets you passed over at a minimum and fired and blackballed if you really tick-off the Money People. (BTDT)

Mosher claims that proponents of GCR-clout are silent about Forbush events:

Weirdly when I look at cloudiness at Forbush events where GCR increase dramatically I can find no change in cloudiness. When I challenge believers in Svensmark to state a testable hypothesis, they all go silent. Seems they want to claim an effect but not define a test for it.

Svensmark is far from silent about evidence from Forbush events. From the abstract of his 2009 GRL paper:

We find that low clouds contain less liquid water following Forbush decreases, and for the most influential events the liquid water in the oceanic atmosphere can diminish by as much as 7%. Cloud water content as gauged by the Special Sensor Microwave/Imager (SSM/I) reaches a minimum ≈7 days after the Forbush minimum in cosmic rays, and so does the fraction of low clouds seen by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) and in the International Satellite Cloud Climate Project (ISCCP). Parallel observations by the aerosol robotic network AERONET reveal falls in the relative abundance of fine aerosol particles which, in normal circumstances, could have evolved into cloud condensation nuclei. Thus a link between the sun, cosmic rays, aerosols, and liquid-water clouds appears to exist on a global scale.

Wrong. Your alarmist propagandists cherry-pick only those facts that support their agenda.

Look out the window, Carter. What do you see? There are no fast rising seas, as was incessantly predicted by your same alarmist crowd. There is no acceleration of natural global warming since the LIA — in fact, global warming has stopped. It may resume, but not one of the GCM’s predicted this halt in warming. The widely predicted “tropospheric hot spot” never appeared, either. And so on. Failed predictions are the hallmark of the alarmist crowd.

Face it, Carter, everything predicted by your “experts” has ended in failure. You smugly comment, “the reason I can see so far ahead is because I’m standing on the shoulders of giants, were as you are only standing on their toes!”

That foolish insult takes the place of the scientific facts I asked you to provide, Carter. Your total lack of empirical evidence shows that the AGW conjecture is unmeasurable. And if it is unmeasurable, it will remain nothing more than a conjecture.

You have no scientific evidence proving that AGW exists. It may, but if so it is a minuscule effect, so minuscule that you cannot even find it, and no one else can, either.

Mario Lento is right, you have been sucked in by alarmist propaganda. You cannot think for yourself, so your only response is to insult. Get back to us if and when you can show empirical, testable evidence proving AGW. Until then, your response shows just how impotent you are in a scientific debate.

Gary Pearse says:
December 21, 2012 at 10:56 am“these’ clearly refers to the ‘reported correlations between GCRs and climate’ and not to anything else”
No, “these” refers to “observations” – a lot different.
These observations as referred to in the reported correlations. Exactly the same thing. No other observations were mentioned except those reporting correlations between GCRs and climate.

Dr. Svalgaard maintains that solar activity could not be the cause of multi-decadal temperature variability.
Using the same sunspot number values as Dr. Svalgaard, Vukcevic demonstrates the opposite i.e. that the solar activity is indeed THE CAUSE of multi-decadal temperature variability.

Dr. Svalgaard objections to the Vukcevic calculation:
employing the sunspot magnetic polarity
using the Earth’s magnetic variability as a secondary parameter in his calculations.
Dr. Svalgaard finds result infuriating calls correlation spurious, or even worse.
Dr. Svalgaard may or may not be correct, for time being his authority prevails, but the history of science is abundant with similar examples.
Often the initial findings were strongly denounced by those who considered themselves guardians of ‘correct’ science, but eventually ‘spurious’ was recognised as correct.
Decade ago no one would pay much attention to the Vukcevic calculation, but what happens in the coming decade may be very different.
Time will tell.

In reply to Steven Mosher’s comment concerning a request to explain Svensmark mechanisms (note plural rather than singular.) and request for proof of the mechanisms.

Steven Mosher says:
December 21, 2012 at 8:17 am
Which leads one to examine the work of Svensmark and Kirkby on the effect of varying GCR on cloud formation…
Weirdly when I look at cloudiness at Forbush events where GCR increase dramatically I can find no change in cloudiness. When I challenge believers in Svensmark to state a testable hypothesis, they all go silent. Seems they want to claim an effect but not define a test for it.
William:
I can explain the Svensmark mechanisms in detail at all levels. There will be a CNN level testable hypothesis. If I understand the mechanisms there will be news worthy cooling of the planet.

There are three different Svensmark and Tinsley ion mediated cloud formation mechanisms by which solar changes affect planetary cloud cover (four mechanisms if one counts the modulation of cirrus clouds):

2) Solar wind bursts which create a space charge differential in the ionosphere which removes cloud forming ions. This mechanism is called electroscavening. There is tight correlation between GCR levels and planetary cloud cover (18 year correlation) up until around 1992. 1992 to 2006 there is a significant increase in solar wind bursts which removes ions. Hence for that period even when GCR is high there is no increase cloud cover as the ions are removed by electroscavenging. See papers linked to below.

3a) Large solar potential changes. (The driver for this mechanism is what happens when very large objects collapse. See comments for details.) Our sun is a second generation star that formed on the core of super nova. After very long periods of high solar activity when the sun changes abruptly to a Maunder minimum there is a delay (10 to 12 years for the earth) as the planets in the solar system reach equilibrium with the solar potential change. While the earth reaches equilibrium, atmospheric ions are removed and there is an increase in volcanic activity. A proof of this assertion would be a sudden and unexplained drop in planetary temperature when the Svensmark GCR mechanism kicks back in.

3b) An increase in GCR also causes a reduction in high level cirrus clouds. The high level cirrus clouds warm the planet particularly at high latitudes during the winter by the greenhouse effect. (See Tinsley’s paper linked to below for details.) Another proof of the item 3 assertion would be record cold temperatures at high latitude regions in the winter. In the Northern hemisphere that will result in record increase in Arctic sea ice.

Comment:
The physics of what is causing the solar potential change is the same as what is causing the potential change for the super massive objects that are found in the core of every galaxy. In the last 5 years, astrophysicists have found a set of structured anomalies (cannot be explained by the current models) concerning galaxy formation and evolution with redshift and quasar evolution of properties with redshift. This mechanism explains the structured anomalies. See for example Disney et al’s Nature published paper “Galaxies are simpler than expected” – six galaxy parameters that should be random are tightly controlled by some unknown mechanism – and Steinhardt and Elvis’ “The Quasar Mass-Luminosity Plane II: High Mass Turnoff Evolution and a Synchronization Puzzle” – that reports that some unknown mechanism is limiting the mass of the quasar’s super massive object by redshift. The Steinhard/Elvis finding is related to the finding that quasars do not exhibit time dilation with redshift and that there is no evolution of metallicity in quasar spectrum with redshift.)

Since you mentioned Forbush events here is a paper that indicates there is an effect. The Forbush event also creates a space charge differential in the ionsphere which removes cloud forming ions which explain the lack of correlation of cloud cover at high latitudes. At low latitudes the space charge mechanism has less effect.

Rainfalls during great Forbush decreases
The changes of rainfall values during great Forbush decreases recorded by the low-latitudinal neutron monitor of Huancayo (47 events from 1956 through 1992) were examined. The data on precipitations were taken from the State of São Paulo and from the Amazonian region, Brazil. As a rule, the data from more than 50 meteorological stations were used for each events. The main result is the following: during strong decreases of cosmic-ray flux in the atmosphere (great Forbush decreases) the precipitation value is decreased. The effect of rainfall changes is seen more distinctly if wet seasons are considered.

Correlation of planetary temperature and solar wind modulation

A) Correlation of planetary temperature and solar wind modulation of geomagnetic field index.

In Figure 6 the long-term variations in global temperature are compared to the long-term variations in geomagnetic activity as expressed by the ak-index (Nevanlinna and Kataja 2003). The correlation between the two quantities is 0.85 with p<0.01 for the whole period studied. It could therefore be concluded that both the decreasing correlation between sunspot number and geomagnetic activity, and the deviation of the global temperature long-term trend from solar activity as expressed by sunspot index are due to the increased number of high-speed streams of solar wind on the declining phase and in the minimum of sunspot cycle in the last decades.

B) Two mechanisms by which solar winds (electroscavenging) and changes to the solar heliosphere modulate (ion mediated nucleation) planetary clouds (see paper for details this excerpt describes concerning electroscavenging which is not discussed at Real Climate as it is “off message”,)

The solar wind affects the galactic cosmic ray flux, the precipitation of relativistic electrons, and the ionospheric potential distribution in the polar cap, and each of these modulates the ionosphere-earth current density. On the basis of the current density-cloud hypothesis the variations in the current density change the charge status of aerosols that affect the ice production rate and hence the cloud microphysics and climate [e.g., Tinsley and Dean, 1991; Tinsley, 2000]. The underlying mechanism is that charged aerosols are more effective than neutral aerosols as ice nuclei (i.e., electrofreezing) and that the enhanced collections of charged evaporation nuclei by supercooled droplets enhance the production of ice by contact ice nucleation (i.e., electroscavenging). Both electrofreezing and electroscavenging involve an increase in ice production with increasing current density [e.g, Tinsley and Dean, 1991; Tinsley, 2000]. The current density-cloud hypothesis appears to explain solar cycle effects on winter storm dynamics as well as the dayto-day changes of Wilcox and Roberts Effects [e.g., Tinsley, 2000]. Kniveton and Todd [2001] found evidence of a statistically strong relationship between cosmic ray flux, precipitation and precipitation efficiency over ocean surfaces at midlatitudes to high latitudes, and they pointed out that their results are broadly consistent with the current density-cloud hypothesis.

Increases in the suns large scale magnetic field and increased solar wind reduces the magnitude of GCR that strike the earth’s atmosphere. Satellite data shows that there is 99.5% correlation of GCR level and low level cloud cover 1974 to 1993.

2) Increase in the Global Electric Circuit
Starting around 1993, GCR and low level cloud cover no longer correlate. (There is a linear reduction in cloud cover.) The linear reduction in cloud cover does correlate with an increase in high latitude solar coronal holes, particularly at the end of to the solar cycle, which cause high speed solar winds. The high speed solar winds cause a potential difference between earth and the ionosphere. The increase in potential difference removes cloud forming ions from the atmosphere through the process “electro scavenging”. Satellite data (See attached link to Palle’s paper) that confirms that there has been a reduction in cloud cover over the oceans (There is a lack of cloud forming ions over the oceans. There are more ions over the continents due to natural radioactivity of the continental crust that is not shielded from the atmosphere by water.)

As evidence for a cloud—cosmic ray connection has emerged, interest has risen in the various physical mechanisms whereby ionization by cosmic rays could influence cloud formation. In parallel with the analysis of observational data by Svensmark and Friis-Christensen (1997), Marsh and Svensmark (2000) and Palle´ and Butler (2000), others, including Tinsley (1996), Yu (2002) and Bazilevskaya et al. (2000), have developed the physical understanding of how ionization by cosmic rays may influence the formation of clouds. Two processes that have recently received attention by Tinsley and Yu (2003) are the IMN process and the electroscavenging process.

Leif says that because the added sentence appears in a subsection on cosmic rays and clouds, Haigh is “absolutely correct” to treat the added sentence as being just about GCR-cloud while ignore how it acknowledges that SOME substantial mechanism of solar amplification must be at work.

Somebody on the writing team had the courage to slip this bit of truth into the report and Leif thinks that because it wanders outside of the subject heading in which it appears it is okay to pretend it doesn’t exist. Read the SENTENCE Leif. It says exactly what I say it says. Haigh is indeed “flat our lying” about it, and now you are making inane excuses for her lying, pretending that sentences are limited by section headings. Sheesh.

I have no stake in this debate, but see that the AGW people do their best to show that there is no link, while there is a lot of empirical evidence that there indeed is a link between solar activity in general and climate (but if that is by GCR or the UV/ozone/jet stream position or another mechanism, for me still is unresolved).

vukcevic says:
December 21, 2012 at 11:15 amDr. Svalgaard finds result infuriating calls correlation spurious, or even worse.
You presume too much. Nothing is ‘infuriating’, correlations are simply spurious.Often the initial findings were strongly denounced by those who considered themselves guardians of ‘correct’ science, but eventually ‘spurious’ was recognised as correct.
For every one of those, there are myriads that stay spurious.

Alec Rawls says:
December 21, 2012 at 11:24 amRead the SENTENCE Leif.
how about YOU reading the sentence Alec. Here it is:
“7.4.5.1 Correlations Between Cosmic Rays and Properties of Aerosols and Clouds
Many empirical relationships have been reported between GCR or cosmogenic isotope archives and some aspects of the climate system (e.g., Bond et al., 2001; Dengel et al., 2009; Ram and Stolz, 1999). The forcing from changes in total solar irradiance alone does not seem to account for these observations, implying the existence of an amplifying mechanism such as the hypothesized GCR-cloud link.” [my bold: ‘these’ clearly refers to the ‘reported correlations between GCRs and climate’ and not to anything else]

[…]This woman thinks that warming is driven, not by the level of the temperature forcing, but by the rate of change in the level of the forcing.[…]

Elsewhere we call the system response to a step change ‘inertia’ – she could easily look the word up if she were a real scientist. The thermal inertia involved in 1.4 billion cubic kilometres of liquid water washing around a bumpy sphere for example.

You’ve really got to wonder about Leif.
I’ve just been to the sidebar on this very page.
There is a chart of solar activity courtesy of NASA (sunspots as percentage of visible hemisphere)
It shows QUITE CLEARLY that solar activity has been increasing since the 1880 cycle up to a peak in the 1960s, a dip in the 70s then a secondary peak in the 90s.
We’re now back in la-la land. Who do we believe, Nasa/Grenwich etc (and our own eyes)
or Leif who claims that the opposite is happening?
Tell you what, he might be a ‘scientist’ (tugs forelock respectfully) but I wouldn’t let Dr Svalgaard near the air-conditioning controls of a building!

Alec Rawls says:
December 21, 2012 at 11:24 am
how about YOU reading the sentence Alec. In legal papers, ambiguities are often resolved by repeating a clause, so I do that. Here it is:
“7.4.5.1 Correlations Between Cosmic Rays and Properties of Aerosols and Clouds
Many empirical relationships have been reported between GCR or cosmogenic isotope archives and some aspects of the climate system (e.g., Bond et al., 2001; Dengel et al., 2009; Ram and Stolz, 1999). The forcing from changes in total solar irradiance alone does not seem to account for the empirical relationships that have been reported between GCR or cosmogenic isotope archives and some aspects of the climate system, implying the existence of an amplifying mechanism such as the hypothesized GCR-cloud link.”
to explain to empirical relationships that have been reported between GCR or cosmogenic isotope archives and some aspects of the climate system provided they hold up. The report then goes on the point out that the correlations do not hold up: “Although there is some evidence that ionization from cosmic rays may enhance aerosol nucleation in the free troposphere, there is medium evidence and high agreement that the cosmic ray-ionization mechanism is too weak to influence global concentrations of CCN or their change over the last century or during a solar cycle in any climatically significant way. The lack of trend in the cosmic ray intensity over the last 50 years provides another strong argument against the hypothesis of a major contribution of cosmic rays to ongoing climate change.”

Leif says that …Haigh is “absolutely correct” …. Read the SENTENCE Leif. It says exactly what I say it says. Haigh is indeed “flat our lying” about it, and now you are making inane excuses for her lying, pretending that sentences are limited by section headings. Sheesh.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
I find it very interesting that L.S. and other scientists are now ‘reworking’ the historic sunspot numbers…..

Carter says:
December 21, 2012 at 10:56 am“‘Learn to think and speak for yourself for a change’ the reason I can see so far ahead is because I’m standing on the shoulders of giants, were as you are only standing on their toes!

Mr Carter continues to sucumb to Skeptical Science Syndrome. He does not realize that as we peer down on those “giants” they keep getting smaller and smaller and smaller.

Indeed.
40,000 years ago, weren’t we still in the midst of an ice age? Maybe a large increase in GCR, with the climate in that state, is just not going to make the difference it might with the climate in the current state.

Paul Homewood says:
December 21, 2012 at 11:44 amUntil we understand why the MWP dropped away into the LIA, we cannot understand how the LIA ended. … This seems to be the elephant in the room that so many scientists like Haigh try to ignore.
what is there to ignore. Here is how the MWP ended compared to the ‘solar activity record’. although labelled TSI, it is really derived from the cosmic ray record:http://www.leif.org/research/Does%20The%20Sun%20Vary%20Enough.pdf slide 20.
It seems to me that the solar enthusiasts are the ones ignoring the elephant.

Much of the “evidence” for solar activity being a strong driver for temperature is based on kind of argument that temperature should be proportional to forcing that Rawls denounces here. Should we now discount papers like Friis-Christensen & Lassen, and what really remains of the evidence if we do that?

A simple caution to all involved in looking for a “solar-and-temperature” relationship – or any other fundamental “cause” of global climate changes.

The Mid-Atlantic rift existed for some 60 million years – before it was PLOTTED on ocean depth sounders and strip charts. Continental drift existed since Pangaea was broken up – but was not discovered either.

The strip charts existed (data existed!) on paper as evidence LONG before they were read and plotted on maps to show where the mid-Atlantic rift actually was.

Other seismologists had plotted mid-ocean earthquakes, but did not realized they were plotting a 48,000 mile continuous mid-ocean rift zone (separation zone) that explained continental drift.

Geology textbooks could not explain mountains and valleys – but were written anyway. Geology classes were taught anyway. Critics of mountain-building theories were rejected – because they could not propose an alternative “theory” …. But the Alps, Rockies, and Andes were still there. The sea-life fossils were still up high in the mountains. Meteoric rocks DID FLY – but could not be explained.

Continental drift had been discussed and proposed as a SYMPTOM since before Ben Franklin’s day – but was equally rejected – viciously! – by orthodox scientists and scientific organization because “it had no mechanism’ – it had ” no theory to explain it”. The trenches and edge-volcanoes existed around the opposite side of the drifting continental shelves – but were not linked either by theory or by scientists. But – they were still there, just NOT “observed” and written in peer-reviewed papers.

Papers and scientific meeting reviewing and proposing continental drift were rejected vehemently by editors and reviewers – but those same papers were right! The peer-review was wrong!

But – continental drift and plate tectonics EXISTED and WERE CONTINUING despite the absence of a theory or the math or the physics to explain them.

Likewise, simple observations are NOT always enough. If you did not know each bay and inlet geometry, you could reasonably reject the moon as a cause of the tides that are inches high in the Gulf of Mexico and Mediterranean Sea, but tens of feet high in the Gulf of Fundy. You would very properly reject two tides a day of varying heights through the year if you did not know about fluid flow and gravity, about changes in the sun’s pull over the year. If you did not know the upstream floods and droughts – would get a proper tidal chart by only correcting for the sun? Or would you REJECT a proposed solar influence on tides BECAUSE you saw the influence of droughts and floods regularly each summer, spring and fall?

We only “think” we know all of the influences. And we DO confuse “symptoms” of influences for the theory itself. Thus, volcanoes along the Pacific coasts and a mid-Atlantic rift are a SYMPTOM of continental drift, NOT the cause of it. (The cause is underneath both – but NOT visible on the surface.) Sun spots may a SYMPTOM of what might change solar changes in the earth’s climate – but may not be the CAUSE of those changes that accompany sunspot changes.

Lunar craters look like earth-bound volcanoes …. But are not. Lunar seas “look like” earth oceans – and are, in their own way, from “liquid rock” flowing like oceans on earth. You cannot extrapolate too far or you will be wrong! Dead wrong. Equally, you cannot FAIL to extrapolate between “It-is-impossible-to-get-water-on-the-moon” scenarios so the “Mares” cannot be liquid! (Now, why are there no lunar Mares on the back side? )

Humility is required. On every new idea. by both “experts” in the status quo – “we know” – community, and by the “This is a new idea that matches (some) observations, but it has no theory behind it” community.

Correct observations may be explained by a wrong theory.
A wrong theory may explain incomplete – or incorrect – observations.
(Newton and Kepler both explained what was observed at the time of their theories – neither works well near the speed of light.)

Therefore, I caution every one that “observations” of related events – AND unrelated events important to the final theory! – may come well before the theory. And that first theory, that second theory, that correction to the second theory, that third or fifteenth theory may be wrong!

Doesn’t change the observation that proves the final theory.
Nor does it change those “incorrect” observations unrelated to the first, fourth, or fifteenth theory that were wrong!
Doesn’t change the “unrelated observations” that prove the sixteenth theory correct.

Charles Gerard Nelson says:
December 21, 2012 at 11:40 amIt shows QUITE CLEARLY that solar activity has been increasing since the 1880 cycle up to a peak in the 1960s
And before the 1880 cycle activity was decreasing from the 1830-1875 peaks… There has been a roughly 100-yr ‘cycle’ in activity the past 300 years, so numbers go up and down.

“The spoken word has much inflection that adds communication, whereas the Internet written word, rattled off as a short comment, basically leaves it in a confused or incomplete comprehension state. The onus is on the commenter to be clear and precise.”

Some people like to try “cool and clever”. Other people prefer “clear and precise”. Just different flavours of expression, that’s all.

Generally speaking, the “cool and clever” people find it hard to bother with reaching all the way down to the boringly pedantic “clear and precise” people.

mike g says:
December 21, 2012 at 11:50 am40,000 years ago, weren’t we still in the midst of an ice age? Maybe a large increase in GCR, with the climate in that state, is just not going to make the difference it might with the climate in the current state.
Sounds like special pleading to me. Would you have said the same if there HAD been a climate response? That is: ‘the climate response is spurious because we were in the midst of an ice age, so conditions were different and we would not expect a response’.

My favourite (because I thought of it) does not seem to have been picked up by anybody. I even posted it on Svalgards blog and used his name instead of Svenmarks (sorry) and posted it in the wrong place (sorry again). Anyway..

The basic idea followed on from a discovery that was made a few years ago that the resistivity of the solar corona associated with lateral flare currents was not the expected Spitzer resistivity. It turned out to be six orders of magnitude out and very close to that of sea water. So we are ballpark correct in saying that (by the maximum power transfer theorem) that coupling between the Sun’s and Earth’s magnetic fields will lead to much stronger induced currents in the oceans when the sun is more active. This could source the “missing heat” that Landscheidt was looking for and which buffers Earth’s temperatures through solar cycle minima.

Such a mechanism could also explain why glaciation onsets are associated with magnetic field excursions and inversions are associated with a collapsing geomagnetic field as this additional energy source is cut off completely. Obviously it also explains cooling during times of low solar activity. Not only that the oceans skin depth is just what is needed.

Has anyone measured this? Anyone have a boat and some ocean nearby? It should be straightforward. We need to log the (AC) current between the surface and a depth of many tens of meters and correlate that with solar magnetic field index components.

Here is a challenge for a real scientist. If the currents are there and sufficiently large then:

1) The AGW hypothesis is destroyed completely.
2) We are in serious trouble as the geomagnetic field is falling as is the Sun’s magnetic field i.e. a major glaciation is almost upon us.

Gail Combs says:
December 21, 2012 at 11:45 amI find it very interesting that L.S. and other scientists are now ‘reworking’ the historic sunspot numbers…..
When errors are found, they should be corrected. This has happened to the ‘historical sunspot record’ several times already over the past 150 years, so we are just following in the footsteps of that proud tradition.

December 21, 2012 at 10:34 am
‘The last column gives what we now believe is the correct sunspot number’
Thanks Lief!
Can you explain who the ” we”are. My analysis is based on official SIDC figures , so they do not seem to recognize your “we” yet . Are we getting into the same situation as we are with global temperature data sets were there are so many data sets and they are altered frequently when people do not like the current data sets as they disprove their preferred view[ like hadcrut 3 ,hadcrut4, GISS, BEST , etc] Who are you going to believe anymore?. In any case your new figures do not significantly alter my previous observations . Namely low dacadal average sunspot numbers and cooler global surface temperatures seem to happen together too often to be ignored.or minimized.It was happening in the past and is happening as we blog.Just look at what is happening in Russia already and the winter just started.today

As usually, Leif is trying to mislead the readers of this blog about solar activity.

The truth is that the past dynamical behavior of solar activity is not known with precision.

Leif’s position is extreme in the sense that he claims that TSI did not vary at all during the last 300 year and more. Leif’s position is considered unlikely even by the IPCC and by the GCM modelers that prefer to adopt Lean’s TSI models that show a solar activity trending and warming during the last 300 yr and during the last century.

A comparison among some proposed TSI reconstruction is here

Leif’s model is in red, and it is nothing but a linear re-scaled sunspot number record into TSI units: essentially is a toy model.

Other proposed reconstructions of TSI are here

and there is this recent model by Shapiro

and none of the above TSI reconstructions even closely resemble Leif’s “flat sun hypothesis” which is extreme in its flatness.

About the behavior of TSI during the last decades, Leif knowns but hides the fact that there exists a controversy about the TSI groups: ACRIM and PMOD, with ACRIM showing an upward trend from 1980 to 2000, and downward trend after. See here

Now Leif is claiming that because our paleo proxies for solar activity come from GCR, the only mechanism of solar amplification that these proxies can implicate is GCR-cloud. His cite of the chapter 7 sentence, with his commentary added:

The forcing from changes in total solar irradiance alone does not seem to account for these observations, implying the existence of an amplifying mechanism such as the hypothesized GCR-cloud link.” [my bold: ‘these’ clearly refers to the ‘reported correlations between GCRs and climate’ and not to anything else]

You are SHAMELESS Leif, and of course, utterly wrong. Any mechanism of enhanced solar forcing will yield correlations between the cosmogenic isotope record and global temperature, so long as the mechanism of forcing is stronger when the solar wind is up. That’s why the sentence says “an amplifying mechanism” and “such as GCR-cloud.”

GCR is a proxy, for instance, for the UV shift that accompanies variation in solar magnetic activity. This UV shift drives stratospheric ozone creation when solar activity is high, possibly altering atmospheric circulation patterns. That’s Stephen Wilde’s theory: that the Rossby waves that the jet stream follows lose amplitude when solar activity is high, and since the jet stream drives cloud formation, total cloudiness shrinks because the jet stream is not waving around so much. Could be.

Put it this way, if the chapter 7 authors actually mean what Leif is saying, if they actually think that GCR-correlations with climate indices can only implicate a GCR driven mechanism of solar amplification, then every last one of them should have his PhD revoked.

herkimer says:
December 21, 2012 at 12:17 pmCan you explain who the ” we”are.
‘We’ are National Solar Observatory (NSO), the Royal Observatory of Belgium (ROB), and the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), see http://ssnworkshop.wikia.com/wiki/Home for more info.

Nicola Scafetta says:
December 21, 2012 at 12:20 pmIn conclusion, Leif is not trying to inform the readers of this blog. He is simply trying to sell his unlikely “flat sun hypothesis”, which is considered “extreme” in the scientific solar community.
Not at all extreme; here is a similar ‘flat sun’ paper: http://www.leif.org/EOS/2011GL046658.pdf by some of the most respected authors of the ‘scientific solar community’
Their conclusion: “drivers other than TSI dominate Earth’s long-term climate change”
And from the respected people at the San Fernando Observatory:

Alec Rawls says:
December 21, 2012 at 12:27 pmNow Leif is claiming that because our paleo proxies for solar activity come from GCR, the only mechanism of solar amplification that these proxies can implicate is GCR-cloud.
I’m claiming that that is the only thing the report talks about and has in mind, as evidenced by an author of the report.

Paul Homewood says:
December 21, 2012 at 12:38 pmIt does not answer my question , Leif.
The Figure shows that the MWP was ending long before solar activity began to drop and the MWP was unaffected by the grand solar minimum around 650AD, so the partial answer is that the MWP and the LIA have nothing to do with solar activity, but are driven by the stochatic variations any complex system [like the climate] has.

Variation in Solar Output is a Factor of Ten too Small to Account for The Little Ice Age
Given a variation in solar output of 0.1%, the resulting temperature change is a quarter of that, i.e. 0.025% which of 288K is 0.07 degrees, which is a factor of ten smaller than the actual LIA change in temperature.

They may be interviewing people who claim to be scientists. That is a meaningless claim since they are not talking like scientists and not like geoscientists at all. It should be given all the credit is deserves.

Why do these simpletons continue (seemingly forever) to state things thus; “… they are misinterpreting the scientific evidence …”?

I really need to see the beef here. Seriously. I am fed up to the back teeth with these claims. They are not being honest. They reference the ‘evidence’ backing up in screeds, paid for in the blood of third-world strangers and ignoring cause. The evidence that the world has warmed since the LIA. We are drowning in this.

But they are pretending that what they really mean is their evidence to show cause – specifically, bad monkeys burning stuff. Of which they have 0.000

Sleight of mouth.

They strut about acting as if they are arbiters of truth yet lean on a staff created from guesswork and vanity.

‘cherry-pick only those facts that support their agenda’ please explain? Give examples.

‘There are no fast rising seas’ well it depends what you mean? I think its expected 1mm per year at the moment, which would equal 1 metre over 100 years. But an avalanche has to start with the first snowflake moving and them due to positive feedback tons are moved within no time at all. The snow moves to a new state and comes to rest! Ring any bells? Climate change in other words!

‘global warming has stopped’ says who? The Daily Mail? Or as I know it The Daily Fail! Where THEY cherry picked a part of a graph, not informing that there are temperature rises coming along (due to ocean oscillations, etc), that’s going to make them look silly! Basically they picked the start and stop points to make it appear that GW has stopped. FAIL.

‘takes the place of the scientific facts I asked you to provide’ well I have supplied evidence on this thread previously, but the mod don’t seem happy and it goes AWOL into hyper space! But try this

‘You have no scientific evidence proving that AGW exists’ you have a larf or what!

New monitoring system identifies carbon dioxide from fossil fuel burning

‘Researchers have developed a new monitoring technique to distinguish emissions from man-made fossil fuels in the atmosphere from other gases, a technique that likely could be used to monitor the effectiveness of measures regulating greenhouse gases.

The team examined six years-worth of atmospheric gas measurements of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other gases, taken by aircraft every two weeks. Their method allowed them to separate CO2 derived from fossil fuels from CO2 being emitted by biological sources, such as plant respiration, said Scott Lehman, a senior research associate at the University of Colorado, Boulder, who led the study with John Miller, a research associate at the university.

The separation was made possible by the fact that CO2 released from burning of fossil fuels like coal, oil, and gas has no carbon-14, a radioactive form of carbon that is constantly forming in Earth’s atmosphere. Because carbon-14 is radioactive, it decays, or transforms, into another, nonradioactive element over time. Half of a given amount of the substance decays every 5,700 years so fossil fuels, which are derived from remains of plants and other organic matter that accumulated millions of years ago, no longer contain the radioactive carbon. In contrast, CO2 emitted from current biological sources is relatively rich in carbon-14. It’s a significant enough difference for atmospheric scientists to detect, Lehman said’

Alec Rawls says:
December 21, 2012 at 12:27 pmGCR is a proxy, for instance, for the UV shift that accompanies variation in solar magnetic activity. This UV shift drives stratospheric ozone creation when solar activity is high, possibly altering atmospheric circulation patterns.
Apart from what the authors actually said [read it again and again and again and …, if need be], UV has not shown any trend since 1722, only faithfully followed the sunspot number which also does not have any trend over the 300 years, so cannot be involved in any climate trend. But perhaps you are denying that the climate has a trend over that time?

lgl says:
December 21, 2012 at 12:47 pm
<i.Six high cycles in a row means more energy received than three high cycles.
It means that more energy was radiated back to space as well.
TSI has increased 0.2 W/m2 or 0.015% which would raise the temperature 0.01 degree.
Apart from the fact there were not ‘six high cycles in a row’.

Paul Homewood says:
December 21, 2012 at 12:38 pm
It does not answer my question , Leif.
The Figure shows that the MWP was ending long before solar activity began to drop and the MWP was unaffected by the grand solar minimum around 650AD, so the partial answer is that the MWP and the LIA have nothing to do with solar activity, but are driven by the stochatic variations any complex system [like the climate] has.

Thanks for that Leif.

Which brings us back to my original question.
What did cause the MWP to start declining into the LIA in the 13thC?

No, IPCC says that TSI does not explain the reported correlations between GCRs and climate [without acknowledging that those correlations are even valid] and then goes on the examine the GCR-cloud link and concludes that that doesn’t work:

You shouldn’t say “No” to preface a statement that is consistent with my comments.

[my bold: ‘these’ clearly refers to the ‘reported correlations between GCRs and climate’ and not to anything else]

[your err: ‘these’ clearly refers to the ‘reported correlations between GCRs and climate’ and not to anything else that is a topic that is about much more than GCRs alone. GCRs are only part of that correlation. Obviously, climate mechanisms are also part of that, and clouds are only one potential mechanism. Non-GCR solar factors and non -solar factors are also potentials, and thus also part of what is referenced in that statement. But then, I said that already.]

lgl says:
December 21, 2012 at 12:47 pmSix high cycles in a row means more energy received than three high cycles.
It means that more energy was radiated back to space as well.
TSI has increased 0.2 W/m2 or 0.015% which would raise the temperature 0.01 degree.
Apart from the fact there were not ‘six high cycles in a row’.

Paul Homewood says:
December 21, 2012 at 1:02 pmWhich brings us back to my original question.
What did cause the MWP to start declining into the LIA in the 13thC?
What do you think? It is clear that it was not declining solar activity. The wider question is “why are there those long-term swings in climate. One answer could be that any sufficiently complex system has natural, internal fluctuations and Earth’s climate may not be an exception. The same could be said for solar activity. Why are they grand minima at seemingly random times?

JJ says:
December 21, 2012 at 1:03 pm[your err: ‘these’ clearly refers to the ‘reported correlations between GCRs and climate’ and not to anything else that is a topic that is about much more than GCRs alone.
You may think so, but it is clear that the IPCC authors were only referring to the ‘reported correlations between GCRs and climate’ and nothing else. You could fault them for that, not me.

Phillip Bratby says:
December 21, 2012 at 10:34 amWhen I was a student of physics at Imperial many years ago, it was a renowned college, part of the University of London. Since then it has become a separate organisation and has become commercialised.

I was there too, some decades ago. Professor Leventhal occasionally would remind us that the ‘science is built on reasoning of an individual'; such a contrast to the daily yelling ‘spurious, spurious’ by certain Dr. .S.

‘The work presented in the thesis indicate that the largest Forbush decreases affect aerosol formation and in turn cloud cover on a global scale.”

When time permits I’ll look at the data again, but there were so many ways to cut the data that I was concerned about the issues of multiple tests. Simply, cut the data 20 different ways and you will find an effect by chance.

Nicola Scafetta says:
December 21, 2012 at 12:20 pmLeif’s position is considered unlikely even by the IPCC
Now, there is a recent TSI reconstruction by Shapiro et al. which postulates a large change since the Maunder Minimum, but as the IPCC states [in the Supplement to Chapter 8]”
“The analysis of Shapiro et al (2011) falls outside the range 0.08–0.18 W m–2 reported above: 0.78 W m–2. Studies of magnetic field indicators suggest that changes over the 19th and 20th centuries were more modest than those assumed in the Shapiro et al. (2011) reconstruction (Lockwood and Owens, 2011; Svalgaard and Cliver, 2010). Also, analysis by Feulner (2011) indicate that temperature simulations driven by such a large solar forcing are inconsistent with
reconstructed and observed historical temperatures, while use of a forcing in line with the range presented here are consistent. Hence we do not include this larger forcing within our assessed range. Schrijver et al. (2011) and Foukal et al. (2011) find a RF which is consistent with the RF range given above (0.08–0.18 W m–2″

Paul Homewood says:
December 21, 2012 at 1:02 pm
“Which brings us back to my original question. What did cause the MWP to start declining into the LIA in the 13thC?”
What do you think? It is clear that it was not declining solar activity.

I don’t know, Lief!!

What I do know is that until we understand the question , we cannot start to answer what caused the LIA to end.

Paul Homewood says:
December 21, 2012 at 11:44 amUntil we understand why the MWP dropped away into the LIA, we cannot understand how the LIA ended. … This seems to be the elephant in the room that so many scientists like Haigh try to ignore.

lsvalgaard says:
December 21, 2012 at 11:51 amIt seems to me that the solar enthusiasts are the ones ignoring the elephant.

Dr. S. often quotes the Loehle reconstruction, it does look OK. Here is what I foundhttp://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/LL.htm (do I here ‘spurious, spurious’ ?)
Not perfect, but what it is?
hmmm…., possibly the Dr. Svalgaard’s reworked TSI, but only when he finishes off couple of ‘wiggles’ still left in the data; work in progress.

vukcevic says:
December 21, 2012 at 1:19 pmthe ‘science is built on reasoning of an individual’; such a contrast to the daily yelling ‘spurious, spurious’ by certain Dr. .S.
You might want to remind the readers that I have given ample reasons for the assessment that your correlations are spurious.

Paul Homewood says:
December 21, 2012 at 1:32 pmWhat I do know is that until we understand the question , we cannot start to answer what caused the LIA to end.
almost everybody on this thread seems to a priory disagree with you [and me] claiming: “it is the Sun, stupid”.

“Leif’s position is extreme in the sense that he claims that TSI did not vary at all during the last 300 year and more. ”

lsvalgaard says:
December 21, 2012 at 11:59 am

“There has been a roughly 100-yr ‘cycle’ in activity the past 300 years, so numbers go up and down.”

Hmmm, Leif’s comment was at 11:59 and Nicola’s was at 12:20. But I recall that Leif, many times, has said “the sun doesn’t vary enough” but an echo would be that it does vary. What else could “numbers go up and down” mean?

As the old saying goes “there are none so blind as those who do not want to see”..

Regarding the excess of wind turbines etc – all these will be recycled (using the normal methods), two reasons:
1. Those operating them will go to the wall and all the equipment will be available at fire sale prices (never were independently financially viable);
2. The metals and masses of rare earth materials they contain are well worth recycling.

Such materials could be used to produce much more efficient hydro electric or nuclear for instance.

I just wish one or two wind turbines could be preserved, with the following notice:

A memorial to Dumb Group Think – never let your science be led by a political agenda – the results are always illogical, expensive and totally useless.

vukcevic says:
December 21, 2012 at 1:35 pm
Here is what I found http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/LL.htm (do I hear ‘spurious, spurious’ ?)
Yep. Assuming you still use the secular variation at the South Pole. The problem here is that there were no measurements at all of the intensity before Gauss figured out how to do it in 1832, and that there were no measurements of any magnetic elements in the interior of Antarctica before the IGY in 1957, so any claim relying on the South Pole ‘data’ before 1957 is suspect. The models we have [which you use] were based on linear extrapolation back in time of the trend back to 1832 and on spatial extrapolation from lower [mostly Northern] latitudes to Antarctica.

That is not empirical evidence. The observable real world shows no warming for a decade and a half, while CO2 continues to rise. Further, the planet has warmed along the same trend line [the declining green line] since the LIA. Global warming has not recently accelerated [in fact it has stopped]. Therefore: CO2 does not have the claimed effect.

Carter:

Thank you for your long and pointless explanation of rising CO2, some of which is anthropogenic in origin. But so what? We all knew that has been the case. It simply shows that CO2 does not matter.

You are avoiding the central question with your strawman argument: has the rise in [harmless, beneficial] CO2 caused runaway global warming [or even any global warming on top of the long term trend]?

The answer is no. The long term global warming trend is the same now as it has been since the LIA. CO2 has had no measurable effect. None. As we see, the spurious correlation between CO2 and T has broken down. It was just a temporary coincidence between about 1980 and 1998. That coincidence has ended.

Finally, it has been pointed out to you that your 1 mm/year sea level rise only amounts to a few inches per century. The only thing we really have to be alarmed about is your sad arithmetic skillz. ☺

Very interesting abstract. I’ve been wondering if there are GCR aerosol interactions in cloud seeding, and it appears there are.

During the period from the 1970s to around 2000 there were very substantial changes in the levels of anthropogenic aerosols (plus black carbon and other particulates) across much of the world from clean air initiatives, catalytic converters, power station scrubbers, etc. And until we have a better understanding of GCR aerosol interactions, I doubt we can draw any firm conclusions about the effects of GCRs.

“When I challenge believers in Svensmark AGW to state a testable hypothesis, they all go silent.”

There. Fixed it for you. ☺

################

falsifying AGW is simple. Show that c02 is not opaque to IR.
==============================================================
A layman here but it seems that the crucial part is in the “A” of AGW.
PS This is not meant as a point of arguement but just get an idea where you are coming from, you support the AGW hypothesis. Do you support the CAGW hypothesis? If you’d rather not say or aren’t sure, that’s OK. I see your name pop up alot and am just curious.

Robin Kool says:
December 21, 2012 at 1:53 pmMaybe that causes the difference in understanding the text. Some are reading it, Dr. Leif Svalgaard is listening to it and reading its mind.
Dear Robin, thank you for the kind words and for your understanding.

@eco-geek 12:06am I like; a possible check , the detection of localized magnetic effects from satellite might be a way of inferring the existence of lateral ac current in the ocean.
Need accurate solar observation and adequate precision in earth sensing, mag & gravity.
When the Chinese and Indians build their space program, maybe we can beg a ride of such devices.
(yes little bit of sarc)
@ Henry Galt 12:34pm Sir I concur. “I don’t know” are words the team members will not speak. Breath-taking arrogance, brazen authoritism and naked fear.

good to hear from you too Steven. I feel very much out of my comfort zone with respect to GCR’s, ionisation, aerosols and cloud condensation physics but think this is something I want to read up on and understand at a more fundamental level. From a geological perspective the implications of some of the ideas promoted by Shaviv and co-workers regarding the GCR flux, the faint sun paradox and timing of major cooling episodes from 2.3 billion years ago on to through the Phanerozoic are interesting.

herkimer says:
December 21, 2012 at 8:00 am
Indeed. The breakover between warming and cooling is a sunspot number of 40 which equates to a F10.7 flux of 102. Better to use the flux number because it can’t be fiddled with. If this cycle continues to behave like Solar Cycle 5 then the flux number will drop away rapidly after reversal which I expect to be in May 2013.

“…The forcing from changes in total solar irradiance alone does not seem to account for these observations, implying the existence of an amplifying mechanism such as the hypothesized GCR-cloud link.”
=====
I’m not sure what Lief thinks the words “such as” means. You could replace them with the words “for example” and keep the same meaning. So the GCR-cloud link is given as just one example of an implied “amplifying mechanism.” Just because no other examples are listed does not mean they can be excluded. There are many examples to illustrate this point such as the following: “There are other planets in our solar system such as Mars and Jupiter.” That is not to say that Mars and Jupiter are the ONLY other planets in our solar system. Those were just given as examples. The use of “such as” leaves open other possibilities than just the ones explicitly stated in the sentence. Lief should know that and is being deliberately obtuse to say otherwise.

That is an extremely lame response. I was not “cherry-picking”, I was simply noting what another commenter pointed out: your arithmetic is faulty.

Now, if you’d like to be taken seriously, explain for us why the recovery from the LIA has been along the same trend line, whether CO2 was low or high. There has not only been no recent acceleration of warming, but global warming has stalled. I have plenty of charts showing that fact, so if you like I can post them.

The central fact remains: CO2 has no measurable effect on global temperatures. Therefore the rise in CO2 can be completely disregarded. It is too small a forcing to matter. That is what the real world is telling us.

Who could possibly think that cooling should commence when forcings are at their peak, just because the very highest peak has been passed?
———-
Me! The earth’s energy balance is in equilibrium with the rate of solar energy input equal to the rate of earth infra red energy output.

Any change in forcing will affect the primary absorber, the near surface layers of the ocean immediately. And this will affect air temperatures on very short time scales.

Alec’s boiling pot analogy is a false analogy because the electric element, the energy source, is not in equilibrium with the pot of water during the initial heating phase. When dealing with pots of water and a heat source you need to deal with 2 conditions. Initial heating (non-equilibrium) and steady state/low simmer (equilibrium).

This kind of look like Alec’s wrong layman’s understanding crashing into the rocks of real everday physics.

vukcevic says:
December 21, 2012 at 1:19 pmthe ‘science is built on reasoning of an individual’; such a contrast to the daily yelling ‘spurious, spurious’ by certain Dr. .S.
lsvalgaard says:
December 21, 2012 at 1:36 pmYou might want to remind the readers that I have given ample reasons for the assessment that your correlations are spurious.

Yes, with pleasure, but none is valid:
– Shouldn’t use sunspots magnetic polarity as a proxy for the solar magnetic field polarity.
– Denying that Earth’s magnetic field has oscillations, which do exist and coincide with Hale cycle frequency, directly derived from data by Jackson and Bloxham.
– It is illegal even to think that the Earth’s magnetic field could produce in any receptor any reaction at the same time, or of the same kind as the solar magnetic field, e.g. Lorentz force on saline and ionized ocean water
– Earth’s magnetic field must not be used as proxy for the Earth’s interior dynamics, which can reach the crust and cause geological movement.
End so on and on, and on, and on …….

closely mirrors the short and medium term ocean and land temperature oscillations.
This is absolutely contrary to your self proclaimed ‘enforcement’ role, that the ‘sun has nothing to do with it’, which it is without a doubt a wobbly crutch supporting the decrepit AGWs CO2 hypothesis.

Hers is the stock answer that pretty much every “consensus” scientists gives when asked about the solar-warming hypothesis
———
Alec just can’t get his head around the idea that all those highly regarded professional scientists are right and Alec Rawls the eccentric right winger with economics training is embrassing himself and the whole of climate sceptic land.

This thing with the kettle is up there with Steve Goddard getting confused about water triple points because he couldn’t interpret a phase diagram properly. At least phase diagrams are a pretty obscure bit of knowledge and skill. Boiling kettles are not.

John West on December 21, 2012 at 7:40 am
According to the climate science view of heat transfer the hottest part of the day would always be exactly at noon and the hottest part of the year would coincide with the longest day when the daily an annual forcings peak.
———–
No. The climate science view is that their is a delay and the real issue is how much delay in which physical system.

Howard Richman says
The consensus scientists are trying to refute his theory and ignore it at the same time
———-
Logic fail. Internal contradiction.

And by the way Alec has not come up with these ideas all by himself. He is leaching off research into ideas that climate scientists have already considered and discarded due to inconsistencies with the evidence.

Steven Mosher says:
December 21, 2012 at 1:32 pmfalsifying AGW is simple. Show that c02 is not opaque to IR.
rofl Steven, do you really believe what you say?
Water is opaque to IR,
CO2 not.
CO2 has only specific frequency bands which cover about 8% of IR .
so CAGW falsified based on your definition.

LazyTeenager says:
December 21, 2012 at 2:24 pmWho could possibly think that cooling should commence when forcings are at their peak, just because the very highest peak has been passed?
———-
Me! The earth’s energy balance is in equilibrium with the rate of solar energy input equal to the rate of earth infra red energy output.
Any change in forcing will affect the primary absorber, the near surface layers of the ocean immediately. And this will affect air temperatures on very short time scales.

Lazy, read above comments & try to understand why the 21st of June is not the warmest day of the year.

Kristian says
For instance, in a theoretical steady state, with solar IN (considered static) exactly balanced by IR+latent+sensible OUT
———-
There is your mistake right there. Incorrect assignment of system boundaries.

If the boundary is set to top of atmosphere solar energy input must equal infrared radiation output. Here infrared is the emission from top of atmosphere across all ir wavelengths. TOA from the point of view of emission is effectively at different heights for different wavelengths.

If the boundary is just above the earths surface then IR+latent+sensible is correct but then this is a different IR flux than the one at TOA. The surface IR flux is smaller than the TOA flux.

David Archibald
Indeed. The breakover between warming and cooling is a sunspot number of 40 which equates to a F10.7 flux of 102.

The annual average sunspot number for the last 10 years is only 29.3 , so there should be no surprise why cold temperatures are starting to crop up all over Northern Hemisphere , especially inland areas like Russia, eastern Europe and Canadian Prairies . The above decadal sunspot number will get even lower as we drop from near solar max to solar minimum so there could be some even colder winters ahead . The reason I switched to using decadal based figures is that there are too many other short term climate variables if you look at monthly or yearly figures that can mask the energy of the sun like ocean cycles and other . You also need at least a decade to get a real measurable impact. For IPCC not cover this topic in full detail could make AR5 totally useless and irrelevant before it even comes out. We may not completely understand the mechanism yet but the warning should be there for the public to prepare for possible colder weather the next 2-3 decades that is quite different from the warm winters that they falsely focus on report after report .

‘CO2 has no measurable effect’ oh yes it does! Because it blocks the heat vent into space that allows the heat to escape at the correct wavelength! As recorded by satellites or are they in on the con as well?

And Global warming and co2

And where are the references for ‘cherry-pick only those facts that support their agenda’ please explain? Give examples’,

Here geomagnetic field is most likely a good proxy for geological movements in the northern reaches of the mid-Atlantic ridge affecting flow of the ocean currents in the area with strong ocean- atmosphere interaction.

Geological records in the area suggest close correlation to the solar activity on one side and regional temperature on the other:

You know, I have mentioned the Wilson Cloud chamber and the streaks of cloud created in it by GCRs, and a variety of atomic particles passing though it on about 3 or 4 occasions on WUWT without seeming to elicit any interest in this fact. Charles T. R. Wilson, Scottish physicist invented it and received the Nobel Prize in 1927. Ten years later, Carl Anderson, US physicist received the Nobel Prize for discovering that GCRs contained positrons and muons using the cloud chamber. Donald Glaser won the NP for his improvement, the bubble chamber. How come I’m the only one that appears to have mentioned this in the context of GCRs and cloud formation. Does Svensmark and colleagues reference Wilson as the source of the idea? I note that many commenters express doubts about such a fanciful notion without the benefit of the knowledge that it was demonstrated in 1911 and generated 3 Nobel Prizes up to 1962. From this post, it seems apparent that Ms. Haigh, a physicist (British at that) is unaware of her countryman’s discovery. Why hasn’t this device or a more elaborate one been revisited to assess the effectiveness of GCRs on cloud formation. Models and CERN be darned. Watts up with that? Over and out.

David Archibald
Indeed. The breakover between warming and cooling is a sunspot number of 40 which equates to a F10.7 flux of 102.

The annual average sunspot number for the last 10 years is only 29.3 , so there should be no surprise why cold temperatures are starting to crop up all over Northern Hemisphere , especially inland areas like Russia, eastern Europe and Canadian Prairies . The above decadal sunspot number will get even lower as we drop from near solar max to solar minimum so there could be some even colder winters ahead . The reason I switched to using decadal based figures is that there are too many other short term climate variables if you look at monthly or yearly figures that can mask the energy of the sun like ocean cycles and other . You also need at least a decade to get a real measurable impact.

OK, so – if your decadal choice is not explicitly based on 10 for any other reason – use 11 (or 11.5 years) rather than 10 for your averaging interval.

This way, you will average a ‘symptom” or “effect” of any possible sun spot relationship across a single sunspot cycle.

if an effect is increasing w/r sunspot numbers, then your relationship increases. If inverse to sunspot numebrs and shifted w/r to a date interval, you might see that effect. If proportional to sunspot numbers, then a 11 year cycle average ought to increase, steady, decrease, and then steady again.

if proportional some how to alternative positive and negative sunspot cycles, then a 22 year response might appear from a 11 year averaging period. An arbitrary 10 year period would hide all of these effects. Or worse, would “almost” show some of the effects, and hide others at different years. The result will be confusing, rather than enlightening.

You may think so, but it is clear that the IPCC authors were only referring to the ‘reported correlations between GCRs and climate’ and nothing else. You could fault them for that, not me.

One again, the “correlations between GCRs and climate” is not (as you stated) “all about GCRs”. The problem is not with what they said, it is with how you are mischaracterizing it.

Reference to correlations between GCRs and climate necessarily encompasses more than GCRs. It also includes climate (duh). And it also includes the correleation, which may be caused a factor that is neither GCR nor climate. The only thing explictly off the table for that discussion, according to IPCC, is TSI. Every other possible cause for the observed correlation is included.

Alec is correct. Haigh is dishonest. You are obtuse. Perhaps willfully.

Problem with that entire discussion is that the late twentieth century warming is an imaginary warming. Satellites show that the global mean temperature stood still from 1979 to 1997, an 18-year stretch. But ground-based temperature curves show it as a steady rise of temperature, that “late twentieth century warming.” Or Hansen warming if you prefer because that is the one he is supposed to have reported to the Senate in 1988. In truth there is no warming there, just El NIno peaks alternating with La Nina valleys, five full cycles of them. Real warming did not start until 1998 when a super El Nino arrived. It brought a large amount of warm water across the ocean and caused a step warming that raised global temperature by a third of a degree and then stopped. This is the only warming during the entire 33 years of satellite observations. It is oceanic in origin, not greenhouse, and not solar. It and not an imaginary greenhouse warming is the cause of the very warm first decade of this century. The warmth is certainly real and various ecological effects like migration of populations occur but they are not a consequence of the greenhouse effect as Hansen keeps telling us. Since the end of the step warming temperature has not risen for sixteen years, by Met Office count. At the same time, carbon dioxide kept going up relentlessly. If carbon dioxide goes up but temperature does not the climate sensitivity becomes zero. You can say that by this criterion climate sensitivity has been zero for the last 16 years. Looking back from the satellite era, it was preceded by another step warming in 1976 that then went by the name of the Great Pacific Climate Shift. It supposedly raised global temperature by 0.2 degrees but I cannot verify that. It has been attributed to the PDO changing from its cool to its warm phase, another oceanic phenomenon. The origin of such step warmings is what should be investigated, not arguing theories of how an imaginary warming in the late twentieth century may or may not have been caused . (Hint: it was anthropogenic.)

Now, how about you answer my questions @2:22 pm above, instead of always changing the subject? Explain for us your version of why the recovery from the LIA has been along the same trend line, whether CO2 was low or high.

And please, stop posting your lame ass videos. Speak for yourself. I will be more than happy to debate your reasoning, such as it is. But your stupid videos amount to nothing more than being your sock puppet. We can’t debate with a video. Especially not with one featuring an arm waving, wild-eyed lunatic like that.

“‘CO2 has no measurable effect’ oh yes it does! Because it blocks the heat vent into space that allows the heat to escape at the correct wavelength! As recorded by satellites or are they in on the con as well?”

Well too bad the video ends before that guy explains what actually happened.

WHAT is scientific about CO2AGW?

The known fact that more CO2 in the atmosphere leads to a pressure broadening of the
absorption lines of CO2, retaining a slightly bigger amount of IR photons in that band.
Everything else is unscientific.

The conclusion that the pressure broadening of these few lines will lead to an inevitable
catastrophic warming of the earth is akin to the following analogy:

A kid watches a mountain creek. The kid throws a stone into the creek and walks away.
The added resistance by the stone hinders the water very slightly to move downstream, and
over time, this leads to the formation of an evergrowing lake.
Some day, the lake becomes so big that the villagers who lived nearby in the valley all drown.

The climate scientist resembles a figure that watches the kid as he throws the stone into the creek,
and runs to the village, warning everyone of the impending catastrophy.
Obviously, the climate scientist is the village idiot.

Gary Pearse says:
December 21, 2012 at 3:32 pm You know, I have mentioned the Wilson Cloud chamber and the streaks of cloud created in it by GCRs, and a variety of atomic particles passing though it on about 3 or 4 occasions on WUWT without seeming to elicit any interest in this fact. Charles T. R. Wilson, Scottish physicist invented it and received the Nobel Prize in 1927.

Gary, thank you for mentioning it.
When I first heard of GCR years ago I though it is another fanciful “funny skeptic theory”, only when later the “cloud chamber” “magic words” came to my mind I realised the mechanism and started to give the theory mentally a chance. Shame on me, I did not thought from the very first moment at it.
I would say it is good to recall it in posts as there is no such record in wikipedia – only a mention in Svensmark’s page about “cosmoclimatology”:

“The resulting ions act as condensation nuclei, around which a mist will form (because the mixture is on the point of condensation).”
To help people connect the dots is helping to increase the understanding of the phenomenon and the theory.

As Mosher reminds us from time to time, that means we can’t target heat-seeking missiles in those particular IR frequencies.

But the CO2 absorption is a fleetingly small nano-second of time. Within a nano-second, that CO2 molecule has transferred the absorbed energy to another N2, O2 or Argon molecule. Then what happens? Anyone know? Does it even matter at all that a CO2 molecule absorbed that photon? Anyone know?

Please replace “Look whose accusing people …” with “Look who’s accusing people …”. See wikipedia: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/who%27s#English . “Whose” is a possessive but nothing is being possessed here. Instead the sentence could read “Look who is accusing people …”, with “who is” abbreviated correctly to “who’s”

I doubt that even the English dictionary will change lsvaalgaard\s mind.
His problem in understanding the simple, straightforward sentence may not be with language, but instead with inability to let go of his preconception of what the report “must” say.

If I talk Like Trenberth maybe it will work.
So my feeble suggestion is indeed, Lief, that you ask a non climate-science-involved person to read that sentence and tell you what it says.

Bill Illis says:
December 21, 2012 at 4:16 pmCO2 is opaque to IR photons in certain frequencies.
As Mosher reminds us from time to time, that means we can’t target heat-seeking missiles in those particular IR frequencies.
But the CO2 absorption is a fleetingly small nano-second of time. Within a nano-second, that CO2 molecule has transferred the absorbed energy to another N2, O2 or Argon molecule. Then what happens? Anyone know? Does it even matter at all that a CO2 molecule absorbed that photon? Anyone know?

One point that the CAGW crowd ignores is that the complete radiation story is the 26 W net transfer from ground to higher atmosphere (the difference of the greenhouse fat arrows).
So all that “greenhouse” can do is influence this net energy transfer flow.
Only thinking in net energy transfers makes sense to me:

Furthermore only a part of those 26W are due to CO2. Gases are very bad emitters of IR.
I remember in school we made a comparison between a H2 fire and a candle. The candle is apparently warmer as it contains tiny solid particles which radiate heat. The H2 fire appears to be colder (even if being much warmer in fact) as gases do radiate heat very poorly.
The IR ground absorbtion is in the first several tens of meters for CO2 bandwidth and I understand that Miszkolczy found no reduction in the transparency – interesting enough.

Isvalgaard:
“Given a variation in solar output of 0.1%, the resulting temperature change is a quarter of that, i.e. 0.025% which of 288K is 0.07 degrees, which is a factor of ten smaller than the actual LIA change in temperature.”
So a 100% increase (doubling) in solar output would only result in a 7 degree warming???

Gary Pearse says:
December 21, 2012 at 3:32 pm
You know, I have mentioned the Wilson Cloud chamber and the streaks of cloud created in it by GCRs…..
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Thank you for bring it up. As Lars P. @ December 21, 2012 at 3:57 pm indicated it seems to be getting buried under the rug. (That rug is getting awfully lumpy)

Temps lags sun exposure. For example, today is Winter Solstice but our coldest temps aren’t typically until late January/early February. Same with the Summer Solstice. Longest day is June 21st but warmest temps are late July through early August. An easy way to see is to go to weather.com (looking at temps rather than propaganda) and look at the average for your city. For Denver:

July clearly shows to be the warmest “Average” and January shows to be the coldest “Average”.
The point is, there is almost nothing with an instantaneous reflection of change. Almost everything lags something else.

More due to the tilt of the earth, yielding a warmer arctic (a source of ‘cool’ air-masses BTW) what with the ‘warming’ seen there in summer, coupled with fewer cold fronts (composed of arctic air-masses) that make their way south to say the 35th parallel (and the bulk of the US mainland) in July into August, otherwise, we *might* see some cooling off after the summer solstice (but the earth and weather systems are not so simple with heat-energy distribution as reflected in measured temperature)

IOW, there are darn good meteorological reasons we don’t see an immediate cool-down after June 21st and no single reason should be cited.

ecoGuy says:
December 21, 2012 at 1:44 pm
…………I just wish one or two wind turbines could be preserved, with the following notice:

A memorial to Dumb Group Think – never let your science be led by a political agenda – the results are always illogical, expensive and totally useless.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
And perhaps a quote or two from Eisenhower.

Love of liberty means the guarding of every resource that makes freedom possible—from the sanctity of our families and the wealth of our soil to the genius [of] our scientists…

Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.

“Reference to correlations between GCRs and climate necessarily encompasses more than GCRs. It also includes climate (duh). And it also includes the correleation, which may be caused a factor that is neither GCR nor climate. The only thing explictly off the table for that discussion, according to IPCC, is TSI. Every other possible cause for the observed correlation is included.”

You know, I have mentioned the Wilson Cloud chamber and the streaks of cloud created in it by GCRs, and a variety of atomic particles passing though it on about 3 or 4 occasions on WUWT without seeming to elicit any interest in this fact. Charles T. R. Wilson, Scottish physicist invented it and received the Nobel Prize in 1927. Ten years later, Carl Anderson, US physicist received the Nobel Prize for discovering that GCRs contained positrons and muons using the cloud chamber. Donald Glaser won the NP for his improvement, the bubble chamber. How come I’m the only one that appears to have mentioned this in the context of GCRs and cloud formation.
…

Seems to be a basic failing of some when attempting to couple physically-observable evidence (as in his experiment) with logos (an ‘evidentiary logic failure’ perhaps); one can lead a horse to the cloud chamber but one cannot make him see the streaks nor draw conclusions or implied causes.

I have always wanted to see the difference in cloud chamber appearance (the tracks and performance!!!) at sea level vs FL 340 or FL 400 (40,000 feet) say … I understand ‘in the day’ they accomplished this through ‘ballooning’, but we live now today in the age of YouTube.

“Many empirical relationships have been reported between GCR or cosmogenic isotope archives and some aspects of the climate system (e.g., Bond et al., 2001; Dengel et al., 2009; Ram and Stolz, 1999). The forcing from changes in total solar irradiance alone does not seem to account for these observations, implying the existence of an amplifying mechanism such as the hypothesized GCR-cloud link.”

I must admit that I find some of the discussion on this particular point to be bizarre and wrong headed. Quite clearly IMO the above is saying at least two things.

1.The three listed papers imply the existence of an amplifying mechanism and
2. One of those potential amplifying mechanisms is the GCR cloud hypothesis

By simple logic, falsifying 2 does not establish that 1 is not valid regardless of what the title of the section this statement appears in. If the authors really wanted to argue that the falsification of 2 requires the falsification of 1, they would’ve had to make a different statement.

Leif writes: That may be so, but recent data shows a disconnect between cosmic rays and low-cloud cover

This is not surprising. Cloud formation is limited in different ways at different altitudes. As I understand it, it is mainly at high altitude that we expect cloud formation to be limited by a lack of nucleation. Also the cooling effect from clouds differs with altitude. High altitude clouds are believed to cool more. They are the ones Svensmark is mostly talking about anyway.

I have a different reason to be skeptical about the Svensmark model. As we all know aircraft contrails, ship trails, SO2 from power plants, fine particulates – these things all cause cloud nucleation and their levels have been up and down like a whores drawers over the past century. It seems likely to me that these factors today would swamp or obliterate any Svensmark GCR influence on the rate of cloud formation. Perhaps the Svensmark mechanism once worked and can explain part of the historical climate record. But whether it still works today with all these other factors also in play is another question.

Who could possibly think that cooling should commence when forcings are at their peak, just because the very highest peak has been passed?
———-
Me! The earth’s energy balance is in equilibrium with the rate of solar energy input equal to the rate of earth infra red energy output.

Any change in forcing will affect the primary absorber, the near surface layers of the ocean immediately. And this will affect air temperatures on very short time scales.

Gerard Roe’s paper applies just as much here as it does in the Milankovitch theory since both deal with a change in the sun as viewed from earth. The effect is not to change the absolute value or the speed/rate of rise or fall, it is to change the acceleration (first derivative) and that is exactly what we are seeing.

As for any “….change in forcing will affect the primary absorber, the near surface layers of the ocean immediately. And this will affect air temperatures on very short time scales….” It depends on the definition of “immediately” because we ARE starting to seeing changes however the oceans hold a heck of a lot of water which has a very high specific heat.

here
The evident changes in the Jets I picked up on a few years ago. – The Prevailing Westerlies used to make figuring out the weather easy a decade ago, but they are no longer ‘trustworthy.’ Since my business is completely dependent on the weather I have to very accurately predict the short term weather 100% of the time or pay up to a $1000 a day penalty when I mess-up. I am much better at it than the radio weathermen in my area because I scrutinize the jet streams and the rest of the weather maps.

So, I have sat here with a bunch of cloud data and a bunch of GCR data.
And i’ve asked a simple question.
If GCR go up, as in a Forbush event, What do expect to see in the cloud data,
AND will you submit your beliefs to a test.

So, far Its been over a year of asking the GCR folks this question and nobody has the conjones
to state a testable hypothesis.

I can hardly wait for next year’s climate conference in Warsaw, Poland!

Carter says:
December 21, 2012 at 2:13 pm‘that your 1 mm/year sea level rise only amounts to a few inches per century’ you should mix imperial with metric, because you’re just confusing yourself!
1 mm/year = 100 mm/century. This is 3.9370079 or 4 inches which is a bit less than the width of your fist.

tests whether high amplitude FDs are correlated with a higher day-night temperature deviation as expected by the proposed GCR-cloudiness link and seems to come down on the side that the observations are consistent with the GCR hypothesis.

To be clear, I don’t think such a link is established by any means, but the argument that there are no testable consequences of the theory is pretty clearly false.

vukcevic says:
December 21, 2012 at 2:26 pmIt is in the magnetic field in the Arctic, as taken from the two world recognized geomagnetic databases.
My comment holds equally well for the Arctic. There is no intensity data from anywhere before 1832, and no measurements in the Arctic before 1882. So ‘data’ is extrapolated in time and space.

Not Fooled says:
December 21, 2012 at 4:58 pm“Given a variation in solar output of 0.1%, the resulting temperature change is a quarter of that, i.e. 0.025% which of 288K is 0.07 degrees, which is a factor of ten smaller than the actual LIA change in temperature.”
So a 100% increase (doubling) in solar output would only result in a 7 degree warming???
You fooled yourself: 100% is a thousand times more than 0.1%. A thousand times 0.07 degrees is 70 degrees. But the formula is not linear for such a large change. The correct value is the fourth root of 2 times 288K, which is 342K for an increase of 54 degrees.

Ian H says:
December 21, 2012 at 5:44 pmHigh altitude clouds are believed to cool more. They are the ones Svensmark is mostly talking about anyway.
He is talking about low clouds, which is where he saw the correlation [which has now gone away].

Shawnhet says:
December 21, 2012 at 5:42 pm1.The three listed papers imply the existence of an amplifying mechanism and
2. One of those potential amplifying mechanisms is the GCR cloud hypothesis
the papers do not ‘imply’ but ‘propose’ or ‘suggest’ that an amplifying mechanism ‘might’ exist, not that it ‘must’ exist. The Bond 2001 paper notes “Virtually every expansion of the subpolar surface circulation is linked to reduced solar irradiance”. The Dengel 2009 paper notes “A relationship between galactic cosmic radiation and tree rings”. The Ram and Stolz 1999 paper invokes Svensmark’s hypothesis. IPCC notes that reduced solar irradiance is probably not the cause, which leaves the GCR hypothesis as the one standing [and the only one IPCC finds worthy of consideration]. Nobody in his right mind would read more into the statement of ‘7.4.5.1 Correlations Between Cosmic Rays and Properties of Aerosols and Clouds’ than that. IPCC does not claim there are dozens of other [mostly unknown] mechanisms in play. The report is very specific about which ‘mechanism’ was considered to be of interest. Anything else is wishful thinking [and there is a lot of that going around, apparently].

Steven Mosher says:
December 21, 2012 at 6:36 pmSo, far Its been over a year of asking the GCR folks this question and nobody has the conjones to state a testable hypothesis.
In the meantime, people are subjecting the mechanism to continued scrutiny, e.g. http://www.leif.org/EOS/swsc120049-GCR-Clouds.pdf
Conclusion: “it is clear that there is no robust evidence of a widespread link between the cosmic ray ﬂux and clouds”. and “This work examines evidence of a cosmic ray cloud link from a range of sources, including satellite-based cloud measurements and long-term ground-based climatological measurements. The satellite-based studies can be divided into two categories: (1) monthly to decadal timescale analysis and (2) daily timescale epoch-superpositional (composite) analysis. The latter analyses frequently focus on sudden high-magnitude reductions in the cosmic ray
ﬂux known as Forbush Decrease events. At present, two long-term independent global satellite cloud datasets are available (ISCCP and MODIS). Although the differences between them are considerable, neither shows evidence of a solar-cloud link at either long or short timescales. Furthermore, reports of observed correlations between solar activity and cloud over the 1983–1995 period are attributed to the chance agreement between solar changes and artiﬁcially induced cloud trends.”

If solar activity peaked in 1996, then according to a study by Usoskin, who found that max temperature in the last 1000 years occurs about 20 years affter a solar maximum, then we should reach a temperature peak about 2016, then cooling. If Lockwood is right with 1985 then we have already peaked about 2005. Looks like T wont rise much between now and at least 2036.

@ Isvalgaard
Why do you say “variation in solar output” when you are actually talking about “variation in TSI”? Variation in solar output would include variation in UV among a host of other components and the relative distribution of those components.

The Bond paper states “Surface winds and surface ocean hydrography in the subpolar North Atlantic appear to have been influenced by variations in solar output through the entire Holocene” Assuming arguendo that the GCR-cloud link is false, can you describe what impact, if any this would have on the implication that statement makes.

I argue that the first statement remains true irrespective of whether we show that there is no GCR cloud link. I further submit that you are the one engaging is wishful thinking (namely that the statement that an amplification is implied means nothing if the GCR link were disproven), but I will wait to see if you can support that contention by referring to the *actual paper*.

John West on December 21, 2012 at 7:40 am
According to the climate science view of heat transfer the hottest part of the day would always be exactly at noon and the hottest part of the year would coincide with the longest day when the daily an annual forcings peak.

———–No. The climate science view is that their is a delay and the real issue is how much delay in which physical system.

Who could possibly think that cooling should commence when forcings are at their peak, just because the very highest peak has been passed?
———-

”Me! The earth’s energy balance is in equilibrium with the rate of solar energy input equal to the rate of earth infra red energy output.
Any change in forcing will affect the primary absorber, the near surface layers of the ocean immediately. And this will affect air temperatures on very short time scales. “

Really!?!? Do you have a clue what the heat capacity of the photonic zone or the well mixed zone is? A pool doesn’t heat “immediately” and yet the “near surface layers of the ocean” do? Come on dude, take a basic physics course.

Gail Combs says:
December 21, 2012 at 5:12 pm“Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.”
Or the even greater danger that public policy could become captive of scientific illiterates.

In an interview with NewSeancetist magazine, Imperial College professor of eco-propaganda physics Joanna Haigh scoffs at the idea that the earth is not flat: “skeptics have it all wrong, if the earth was not flat things would fall off my desk all the time”.

lsvalgaard says:
December 21, 2012 at 7:57 pm
“…
Or the even greater danger that public policy could become captive of scientific illiterates.”
[+emphasis]
Too late, seems like that horse is already out of the barn.

John West says:
December 21, 2012 at 7:35 pmWhy do you say “variation in solar output” when you are actually talking about “variation in TSI”? Variation in solar output would include variation in UV among a host of other components and the relative distribution of those components.
As far as we know, all these other ones stem from the same cause as variations of TSI: variation of the sun’s magnetic field, so is expected to follow trends and variations of TSI. ‘TSI variations’ being in that sense just a shorthand for ‘solar magnetic field variations’ or ‘solar output’. Now, it is possible that the statement that all indicators vary with TSI in a predictable matter is false, but we have no evidence for that at this time.

Shawnhet says:
December 21, 2012 at 7:38 pmAssuming arguendo that the GCR-cloud link is false, can you describe what impact, if any this would have on the implication that statement makes.
What I [or you] think is not relevant. What matters is what IPCC thought when their statement was written. To me, it is crystal clear what their thinking was and what conclusion they would admit.

Alec Rawls is saying it doesn’t feel cooler when the sun goes behind a cloud? There is an immediate response at a surface when the energy supply changes just seen in this type of common experience. Maybe deep in the ocean things are slower, but the surface changes immediately and we live on the surface. Similarly if the sun dimmed, we would notice quite quickly, not twenty years later.

Carter says:
“I can see so far ahead is because I’m standing on the shoulders of giants”
=======================================
Yes, like a monkey on a leash, but they’re not giants- they’re dwarves standing on a heap of bullshit.

Ferdinand Engelbeen (December 21, 2012 at 11:24 am) wrote:
“[…] there is a lot of empirical evidence that there indeed is a link between solar activity in general and climate (but if that is by GCR or the UV/ozone/jet stream position or another mechanism, for me still is unresolved).”

lsvalgaard says:
December 21, 2012 at 1:32 pm
“Studies of magnetic field indicators suggest that changes over the 19th and 20th centuries were more modest than those assumed in the Shapiro et al. (2011) reconstruction (Lockwood and Owens, 2011; Svalgaard and Cliver, 2010).”

See Leif, magnetic field indicators are not “perfect” indicators of solar luminosity multidedacal trending. Magnetic field indicators are mostly correlated with sunspot activity, and the sunspot record is flat in the sense that the sunspot cycle minimum cannot go below zero, so it is bounded. So, everything that strongly depends on the sunspot will appear flat as well.

The trending in TSI and other solar activity components are mostly connected to the background solar radiation that cannot be properly modeled up to now and the direct measurements are controversial because ACRIM uses the TSI data as they are and shows a significant variability, while PMOD uses altered data and does not show a variability.

Thus, several solar scientists have different opinions about how to handle or model the background variation, that is why there are so many different TSI reconstructions. Shapiro’s model is quite different from the other models because it is based on a luminosity comparison among solar-like stars which appear to present a certain variability. In any case, even if Shapiro’s model is wrong that does not make you flat solar model true.

That the IPCC prefers a quasi-flat solar activity is politically clear. If not they would not have promoted the PMOD and Lean’s models. Despite that, they reject your flat sun reconstruction as extreme, and the GCM modelers use Lean’s model.

Philip Bradley says:
December 21, 2012 at 8:43 pmThis is the Forbush event cosmic ray – diurnal temperature range paper.
The paper notes that “The natural variability of atmospheric parameters makes the CR contribution difﬁcult to detect”.
This, of course, means that the CRs are not a major driver [if their contribution is difficult to detect].

Nicola Scafetta says:
December 21, 2012 at 9:17 pmSee Leif, magnetic field indicators are not “perfect” indicators of solar luminosity multidedacal trending. Magnetic field indicators are mostly correlated with sunspot activity, and the sunspot record is flat in the sense that the sunspot cycle minimum cannot go below zero, so it is bounded. So, everything that strongly depends on the sunspot will appear flat as well.
You are seeing the light!

The trending in TSI and other solar activity components are mostly connected to the background solar radiation that cannot be properly modeled up to now and the direct measurements are controversial because ACRIM uses the TSI data as they are and shows a significant variability, while PMOD uses altered data and does not show a variability.
The ACRIM data is no good [as you should know] and the PMOD data is also no good [has uncompensated degradation]. The null-hypothesis must be that there is no background variation. This is also the conclusion by Schrijver et al. and Preminger et al. who show that there is no background variation. Using the cycle average of the Group Sunspot Number as a background variation fails because the GSN itself is flawed.

Despite that, they reject your flat sun reconstruction as extreme, and the GCM modelers use Lean’s model
Nowhere does IPCC refer to my reconstruction, except in the supplement to Chapter 8 where they take note that changes over the 19th and 20th centuries were modest. The GCM modelers prefer Lean’s model because that explains the increase in Temperatures in the first half of the 20th century, but that is just circular ‘logic’.

The paper notes that “The natural variability of atmospheric parameters makes the CR contribution difﬁcult to detect”.
This, of course, means that the CRs are not a major driver [if their contribution is difficult to detect].

They are trying to detect changes over the span of a few days. By way of comparison, climate science is struggling to detect the effects of CO2 over a few decades, where natural variability is at least an order of magnitude smaller..

If the study holds up and it should be fairly easy to replicate with a larger sample, the GCR mechanism will be established and to some extent quantified. The next step is to look for GCR changes over decades, which is, what is climatically significant.

Leif:”What I [or you] think is not relevant. What matters is what IPCC thought when their statement was written. To me, it is crystal clear what their thinking was and what conclusion they would admit.”

Yes, I know it seems clear to you what their thinking is, unfortunately, what you think that they are saying is not what they actually say.

You think that “…the GCR hypothesis as the one standing” and so if you can demonstrate
the GCR link doesn’t work you don’t have to deal with the implied solar amplification. However, the IPCC doesn’t make any claims about the GCR being the [last] one standing, and we know this, for instance, because some of the papers they list don’t even mention the GCR cloud link.

Or to look at it another way, ignore what the IPCC wrote and just read the paper(s). If assuming that the GCR-cloud link invalidates the papers’ conclusions, then you are right to say that when the IPCC refers to those papers, they are only talking about them in the context of the GCR relationship. If the papers’ conclusions remain valid assuming the GCR-climate link is false, then solely by referring to those papers, they are implying relationships that are not dependent on that link. QED.

What I [or you] think is not relevant. What matters is what IPCC thought when their statement was written. To me, it is crystal clear what their thinking was and what conclusion they would admit.

Do tell.

Please provide the crystal clear thinking that can explain how it is that the IPCC made a statement that was, according to you “all about GCR” while citing Bond . Bond is not about GCR/clouds. It isn’t about GCR. The only thing that Bond uses GCR for is the basis for their nuclide proxy for TSI. The climate link in Bond is not GCR. The climate link in Bond is amplified TSI. Said amplification occuring by way of stratospheric ozone production, wind drift of polar ice, and changes to the thermohaline circulation, etc. Not GCR. Not clouds.

So, when IPCC says:

“Many empirical relationships have been reported between GCR or cosmogenic isotope archives and some aspects of the climate system (e.g., Bond et al., 2001; Dengel et al., 2009; Ram and Stolz, 1999). The forcing from changes in total solar irradiance alone does not seem to account for these observations, implying the existence of an amplifying mechanism such as the hypothesized GCR-cloud link.”

They are referring to a climate effect caused by TSI amplification, and neither the climate effect nor the TSI amplification is postulated to be in any way caused by GCR (i.e. Bond 2001). And then IPCC goes on to dismiss that reference by poo-pooing GCR/Clouds, hiding behind “such as”. Their thinking when they wrote it is that they could get away with the bait and switch. That much is crystal clear.

Shawnhet says:
December 21, 2012 at 9:42 pmHowever, the IPCC doesn’t make any claims about the GCR being the [last] one standing, and we know this, for instance, because some of the papers they list don’t even mention the GCR cloud link.
The IPCC only considers the GCR effect in what follows and have no mention of any other mechanism they would think to be a contender. That is the critical point.

Or to look at it another way, ignore what the IPCC wrote and just read the paper(s).
I know these papers very well and have discussed the matter with Gerard Bond on several occasions, e.g. here http://lasp.colorado.edu/sorce/news/sns/2003/sns_dec_2003.pdf
[page 4, it is Bond at the left].If assuming that the GCR-cloud link invalidates the papers’ conclusions
Who cares what we assume? What matters is what IPCC assumes and subsequently elaborates on.

You are confusing transient response with equilibrium response. What you “feel” may be an inflection but not a complete reversal in direction of temperature until that cloud has shaded you for quite a while.

Noon is daily solar insolation maximum yet daily temperature maximum is still hours away. That is not immediate and doesn’t rely on “feelings”. Same thing happens with the annual cycle. Why wouldn’t we expect the same thing to happen on a ~1100 year cycle? the ~2000 year cycle? etc. etc.

… The effect is not to change the absolute value or the speed/rate of rise or fall, it is to change the acceleration (first derivative) and that is exactly what we are seeing.

Changing the speed/rate of rise *is* to change the acceleration (the 1st derivative); non-zero values indicate a change in speed.

And just what is it *we* are ‘seeing’? With temperatures stable for the last 15 yrs or so does this not indicate 1st derivative = 0?

As for any “….change in forcing will affect the primary absorber, the near surface layers of the ocean immediately. And this will affect air temperatures on very short time scales….” It depends on the definition of “immediately” because we ARE starting to seeing changes however the oceans hold a heck of a lot of water which has a very high specific heat.

Those ‘cites’ would not seem to support your thesis, to wit: ” we ARE starting to seeing changes“, and, in fact, your thesis seems to be directly countered by Tim’s article which you seem to indicate supports your thesis.

Perhaps we could all use some of your insight to properly interpret those cited graphs and charts to arrive at your conclusion?

The evident changes in the Jets I picked up on a few years ago. – The Prevailing Westerlies used to make figuring out the weather easy a decade ago, but they are no longer ‘trustworthy.’

No support is provided for this assertion. ‘jets’ [jetstreams] by their nature meander. Perhaps that is where the confusion arises? (They are not strictly W-E flowing winds.)

Satellite Observation: If this real-time image does not depict ‘prevailing westerlies’ then I don’t know what it depicts (NOTICE the systems move W to E):

Since my business is completely dependent on the weather I have to very accurately predict the short term weather 100% of the time or pay up to a $1000 a day penalty when I mess-up. I am much better at it than the radio weathermen in my area because I scrutinize the jet streams and the rest of the weather maps.

Depending on the ‘radio weatherman’ to correctly tear off and read a regional, non-area specific, up-to-date weather-wire dispatch off the teletype is risky; suggest a subscription service to a professional weathercast service versus scrounging off the internet or ‘winging’ it on your own. (My opinion.)

The 2010 Russian heat wave: blocking high, not global warming and the current Cold Blast Claim[ing] Over 600 Lives Across Eastern Europe/Russia…” are both manifestations of these changes in the jets from zonal to meridional flow patterns.

‘Blocking highs’ still allow the movement of ‘prevailing winds’ to move about their periphery, they (BH’s) are not simply static features wherein everything simply stops in place! For the period that the BH is in place, the jetstream can still be active in the periphery of the high.

A couple of resources if you don’t already make use of them: The (1) Convective and Mesoscale Discussion web pages by the SPC and a website where you can view a WV (water vapor) time-lapse loop:

Philip Bradley says:
December 21, 2012 at 9:40 pmIf the study holds up and it should be fairly easy to replicate with a larger sample, the GCR mechanism will be established and to some extent quantified.
You could benefit from a thorough study of http://www.leif.org/EOS/swsc120049-GCR-Clouds.pdf
Conclusion: “it is clear that there is no robust evidence of a widespread link between the cosmic ray ﬂux and clouds”.
Perhaps their conclusion puts you off so you won’t read the paper, but try anyway.

I was talking about the problem of the background radiation that people do not know how to properly model (although if Leif speaks as if he knows it! He does not of what he is talking about, of course).

As I was saying, the IPCC and the AGW guys use Lean’s TSI model that is quite flat, although not so flat as Leif’s model.

Now, Lean’s model is clearly wrong and unable to reproduce the TSI background radiation.
The demonstration of this elementary fact is simple and was even acknowledged by Frolich of PMOD, which coauthored some of Lean’s papers. The fact is that Lean’s model is failing to agree with the TSI observations!

The minimum in 1996 was 1360.7380 W/m^2, while the minimum in 2008 was 1360.8225 W/m^2

Thus, according Lean’s model TSI went up from the 1996 solar minimum to the 2008 solar minimum by about 0.1 W/m^2, while both PMOD and ACRIM show a decrease by at least 0.2-0.3 W/m^2, which makes an error of 0.3-0.4 W/^2, which is a huge error by 30-40% of the solar cycle amplitude.

Thus, it is evident that Lean’s model, which is based on a flux transport model to simulate the Sun’s magnetic flux does not reconstruct TSI multidecadal trending variations, Thus, also the argument of Leif based on magnetic activity model are likely wrong, and the Sun varied more than what Leif or Lean or the IPCC claim.

May somebody inform the IPCC to correct their misleading statement supporting Leif and Lean, by letting them know about the above problem?

“They are trying to detect changes over the span of a few days. By way of comparison, climate science is struggling to detect the effects of CO2 over a few decades, where natural variability is at least an order of magnitude smaller..

If the study holds up and it should be fairly easy to replicate with a larger sample, the GCR mechanism will be established and to some extent quantified. The next step is to look for GCR changes over decades, which is, what is climatically significant.
###############

Once again, I challenge any believer in the GCR effect to PROPOSE A TEST.
we have solar radiation data. we have GCR data.

You think one effects the other? What test will you do? and will you live with the results?

I’m going on over a year waiting for somebody to step up to that challenge.

Nicola Scafetta says:
December 21, 2012 at 9:17 pmthe background solar radiation that cannot be properly modeled up to now and the direct measurements are controversial because ACRIM uses the TSI data as they are and shows a significant variability, while PMOD uses altered data and does not show a variability.
As I said, ACRIM is no good for such comparisons. Here you can see how poorly ACRIM performs: http://lasp.colorado.edu/sorce/news/2011ScienceMeeting/docs/posters/Pa_Cookson_poster.pdf
For Real TSI datasets 2003­03­02 to 2010­05­04 (~7yrs)
● SFO fit to SORCE R2=0.947
● SFO fit to PMOD R2=0.920
● SFO fit to ACRIM R2=0.747 <===

The size of the effect is 0.38C; 0.5C for the largest Forbush events, and maximum effect is right when you would expect to see it, 2 to 3 days after the event.

Not often in climate science you get a close fit between prediction and observation, but they certainly did in this case.

#############

Sorry. I followed their methodology using better observation data and their result could not be duplicated. DTR is an INDIRECT measure of cloudiness as DTR can vary for other reasons.
What you want is a DIRECT measure of cloudiness– eg decreased incoming solar radiation

lsvalgaard says:
December 21, 2012 at 9:39 pm says
“The ACRIM data is no good [as you should know] and the PMOD data is also no good [has uncompensated degradation]. The null-hypothesis must be that there is no background variation. This is also the conclusion by Schrijver et al. and Preminger et al. who show that there is no background variation. Using the cycle average of the Group Sunspot Number as a background variation fails because the GSN itself is flawed.”

Leif’s logic is curious. He says:

1) “ACRIM data are not good” but leif does not demonstrate it nor he quantifies and specifies the error (data may be imperfect, but still good enough for specific major patterns).

2) “PMOD data is also no good [has uncompensated degradation]”, however Leif forgets to state that Frolich is correcting his data for the instrumental degradation. That there exists an uncompensated degradation is a Leif’s postulation because PMOd data do not agree with his flat solar model. From what I know Frolich rejected his claims.

3) “The null-hypothesis must be that there is no background variation.” Really? where is it written, in the Bible? The null-hypothesis must be the luminosity variability observed for sun-like stars as Shapiro does.

4) “This is also the conclusion by Schrijver et al. and Preminger et al. who show that there is no background variation.” Really? How do they know? The TSI experiments say differently.

5) “Using the cycle average of the Group Sunspot Number as a background variation fails because the GSN itself is flawed”. Really? Group Sunspot Number cannot be properly used for the background variation because it is mathematically bounded by being positive defined, not because they are flawed. You do not know much math, don’t you?

“The latter analyses frequently focus on sudden high-magnitude reductions in the cosmic ray
ﬂux known as Forbush Decrease events. At present, two long-term independent global satellite cloud datasets are available (ISCCP and MODIS). Although the differences between them are considerable, neither shows evidence of a solar-cloud link at either long or short timescales. Furthermore, reports of observed correlations between solar activity and cloud over the 1983–1995 period are attributed to the chance agreement between solar changes and artiﬁcially induced cloud trends.”

Ya, In addition to looking at hourly insolation data during a Forbush I could also look at MODIS cloudiness as I’ve got my tools together for that data. However, Banging on the internet for terabytes of data is a PITA. That said, I have found some interesting increased cloudiness over larger cities. I’m going to have a look at MODIS04 aerosols which just dropped in my lap ( some bugs to work out for a guy). to see whats up with that.

Nicola Scafetta says:
December 21, 2012 at 10:16 pm
Ignoring your other nonsense, I’ll comment on:5) “Using the cycle average of the Group Sunspot Number as a background variation fails because the GSN itself is flawed”. Really? Group Sunspot Number cannot be properly used for the background variation because it is mathematically bounded by being positive defined, not because they are flawed. You do not know much math, don’t you?
Nevertheless, the 11-running average GSN is used by people reconstructing TSI by assuming that the emergence of background flux scales with the overall level of solar activity [they use the cycle average GSN as an estimate]. You didn’t know that? Now you do.

Firstly, you say that no one is proposing a test and then when people do point out tests that are out there you appear to be claiming that they are not good enough. However, your proof of this seems to be based on data for a single Forbush decrease measured at 9 stations not to mention the fact that you do not mention the relative strength of the decrease in question.

Personally, I don’t see how your test can be viewed as at all robust compared with the Dragic et al. paper but leaving that aside it seems to me that there is a pretty big difference proposing a relationship and having it shown to be invalid and not being able to propose a relationship at all.

**********************
Leif is a curious guy. ACRIM performs poorly because a TSI proxy model made by SFO which is based on “ground based photometry” poorly agrees with an “uncorrected” version of ACRIM3 dataset! Which is what was used in that poster!

Leif:”The IPCC only considers the GCR effect in what follows and have no mention of any other mechanism they would think to be a contender. That is the critical point.”

IYO. IMO, however, there are *two* important points they raise 1. there is an implied amplification of solar effects and 2. that one mechanism that could explain this is the GCR-cloud link. Respectfully, you have given no argument for why assuming 2 is false tells us anything about whether there is another mechanism resulting in 1 (It all boils down to your *assumption* that the GCR-cloud link is the “last one standing”).

“Who cares what we assume? What matters is what IPCC assumes and subsequently elaborates on.”.

No, what matters ultimately is what scientific papers they reference(who cares what the IPCC assumes either? What matters is what the science says). This is (or should be) the source of all their legitimacy. As such, when they reference papers that support an amplification of solar factors that has consequences beyond its application towards a specific mechanism.

Alarmist troll supervisor: Send’em all in! Send’em all in NOW! They’re discussing SOLAR variation!
Alarmist troll dispatcher: Yes Sir.
Alarmist troll: What should I do?
Alarmist troll supervisor: Just try to keep the discussion on the minutiae of what the IPCC author said or didn’t say, meant or didn’t mean for as long as you can. Then throw in some ad homs and a few heat transfer “misunderstandings” and before you know it the wheat will be hidden by the chaff. Now get in there, they’re figuring out we only have two arguments against solar driven climate and one of them is too stupid for words (peaks must match to correlate) and the other is taking on water fast (TSI is all that matters).

Gail Combs says:
December 21, 2012 at 5:12 pm
“Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.”
Or the even greater danger that public policy could become captive of scientific illiterates.
But if it’s a scientific elite that is so stupid that it can’t shoot straight, things will work out “just right” Right, LS?

John West says:
December 21, 2012 at 10:48 pmPretty greasy choosing a year that’s pulling up out of a grand minimum thereby matching our current dropping into a grand minimum so you can claim “no trend”.
1722 was the year the effect was discovered. If it matches the current value but temperatures do not, what does that tell you?

Shawnhet says:
December 21, 2012 at 11:11 pmAs such, when they reference papers that support an amplification of solar factors that has consequences beyond its application towards a specific mechanism
IPCC doesn’t think so.

Shawnhet says:
December 21, 2012 at 11:11 pmAs such, when they reference papers that support an amplification of solar factors that has consequences beyond its application towards a specific mechanism
BTW, Bond never talked about ‘amplification’ of anything. He thought is was a straight solar irradiance relationship. So that argument goes out the window.

The IPCC only considers the GCR effect in what follows and have no mention of any other mechanism they would think to be a contender. That is the critical point.
….

Who cares what we assume? What matters is what IPCC assumes and subsequently elaborates on.

What is critical is the distinction between the evidence for substantial solar forcing of climate beyond what can be accounted for by TSI and the evidence for particular mechanisms that might be giving rise to that enhanced solar forcing. These are completely separate things. If the evidence for any particular hypothesized mechanism of enhanced solar forcing indicates that it is unlikely to be the source of the evidenced forcing effect, that does not diminish the evidence that some such mechanism must be at work. If the chapter 7 authors only choose to look at mechanisms of solar amplification that work through GCR, that does not in any way affect the possibility that the evidenced solar amplification is working in some other way than through GCR, but please notice that this is exactly what Haigh and Sherwood are claiming.

They explicitly dismiss the idea that there is any substantial enhanced solar forcing that needs to be taken into account and they justify this by saying that the GCR-cloud mechanism does not appear to be strong. The fact that they only choose to look at this particular mechanism does not mean that they can dismiss the evidence, which they acknowledge, that some substantial mechanism of enhanced solar forcing is at work.

Maybe the authors really are thinking what Leif attributed to them earlier. Maybe they really are thinking that, because GCR is used in developing our proxy record for solar activity, the solar-climate effects seen in the paleo record must therefore be mediated by GCR. If so, that might be their most glaring anti-scientific lunacy yet. It is something they all must KNOW is wrong.

Personally I don’t think that is what they are doing. I don’t think they are pretending that the forcing effect implied by GCR-climate correlations would have to be working through GCR. I think they are just limiting what they are choosing to talk about, then pretending that other possibilities can be dismissed, not because they have any scientific justification in mind for the dismissal, but just as brute intellectual dishonesty. It’s the most direct way to cover up what they want to cover up (the likelihood of a yet unaccounted for mechanism of solar amplification). Just don’t mention the evidence that such a mechanism must be at work and pretend that it is enough to dismiss the evidence for this or that particular mechanism.

To those like Haigh and Sherwood who want to follow this strategy of brute intellectual dishonesty, that added sentence, admitting the evidence for some substantial solar forcing beyond TSI, is a thumb in the eye. That’s why my best guess is still that somebody in the name of scientific integrity snuck that sentence in.

Alec Rawls says:
December 22, 2012 at 12:11 amIf the chapter 7 authors only choose to look at mechanisms of solar amplification that work through GCR, that does not in any way affect the possibility that the evidenced solar amplification is working in some other way than through GCR, but please notice that this is exactly what Haigh and Sherwood are claiming.
No, they are just saying that IPCC has chosen not to look at anything else than GCR-clouds.

They explicitly dismiss the idea that there is any substantial enhanced solar forcing that needs to be taken into account
So do I, so I can’t fault them on that.

To those like Haigh and Sherwood who want to follow this strategy of brute intellectual dishonesty
No dishonesty. On the contrary, they stand up for what they believe. Good for them. Applaud them.

admitting the evidence for some substantial solar forcing beyond TSI, is a thumb in the eye.
Except it does not admit any such thing. That is your wishful thinking.

That’s why my best guess is still that somebody in the name of scientific integrity snuck that sentence in.
‘Guess’?

Alec Rawls says:
December 22, 2012 at 12:11 amadmitting the evidence for some substantial solar forcing beyond TSI, is a thumb in the eye.
Except it does not admit any such thing other than the GCR-cloud mechanism. To think otherwise is just your wishful thinking. I’ll predict the statement will be left in as it is.

lsvalgaard says:
December 21, 2012 at 8:22 am
CO2 the last 300 years has risen considerably as have temperatures…
==============
Temperatures started rising 150 years before CO2. Al Gore already showed that temperature leads CO2. Please try and keep up.

such as
Web definitions
for example; like, of the kind mentioned; those who.

Since the sentence is “…such as the hypothesized GCR-cloud link.”, the GCR-cloud link is not exclusive. One can argue that the author’s intent was exclusive to GCR-cloud link but this does not change the fact that this sentence is not.

Excellent summary. While this merri-go-round of Leif pulling the blinds and most other trying to raise same is most entertaining, it is certain that progress will only be made through a far more open and enquiring approach than the stale and hunkered down stance of the esteemed Dr., who seems hell-bent on shutting down all attempts to explore that which has not flowed from his own personal efforts. He presents no thoughts at all on what may be at work here… and something is at work… but (may I be so brave as to gingerly suggest?) is close to achieving troll status in threads of this nature.

ferd berple says:
December 22, 2012 at 12:35 amTemperatures started rising 150 years before CO2. Al Gore already showed that temperature leads CO2. Please try and keep up.
Who says that the rise in temperatures is related [either way] to the change in CO2?
You are being presumptuous

JJ says:
December 22, 2012 at 12:39 amIt is critical in demonstrating their deriliction, and thus their dishonesty, but that they fail to account for what they have said does not unsay it.
They are very honest, only considering what they believe to be important. They are not responsible for whatever misinterpretations people cook up.

BTW, in English, “such as” is used to indicate that what follows is not exhaustive.
But, by only discussing GCR-clouds they clearly dismiss all the other untenable notions.

BTW, Bond never talked about ‘amplification’ of anything. He thought is was a straight solar irradiance relationship. So that argument goes out the window.

For crying out loud Leif, he says it right in the abstract:

“The surface hydrographic changes may have affected production of North Atlantic Deep Water, potentially providing an additional mechanism for amplifying the solar signals and transmitting them globally.”

BTW – In English, “an additional” is used to indicate that there are others. If you read the paper, you can find out what those are. Hint: Not GCR. Or clouds.

lsvalgaard says:
December 22, 2012 at 12:08 amBTW, Bond never talked about ‘amplification’ of anything. He thought is was a straight solar irradiance relationship. So that argument goes out the window.
In the interest of accuracy, he did talk about ocean currents affecting the production of North Atlantic Deep Water, and that can help spread the suggested solar effect.

“The results of this study demonstrate that Earth’s climate system is highly sensitive to extremely weak perturbations in the Sun’s energy output, not just on the decadal scales that have been investigated previously, but also on the centennial to millennial time scales documented here.” Bond et al 2001

lsvalgaard says:
December 21, 2012 at 7:09 pmMy comment holds equally well for the Arctic. There is no intensity data from anywhere before 1832, and no measurements in the Arctic before 1882. So ‘data’ is extrapolated in time and space.

Perhaps you should read:Four centuries of geomagnetic secular variation from historical records

is a sheer coincidence, for all 2000 years of data.
Of course it could happen that Leohle just adjusted temperature data (not likely) to correlate to geomagnetic field in the Kolbeinsey ridge, home of North Icelandic Jet Current (flowing through Denmark Strait) one of principal currents in determining intensity of the ocean – atmosphere interaction

the source of the Icelandic Low, which is the determinant of the polar jet stream trajectory over the North Hemisphere.

AlecR – “That’s why my best guess is still that somebody in the name of scientific integrity snuck that sentence in.”

Presumably it should be reasonably straightforward to identify a shortlist containing the “culprit”. Why not draw up a shortlist and then specifically ask those on the list?

Digressing, is this issue not a potential facesaver for the warmists? If, at some time in the future, they can point to an as yet unknown solar mechanism, that would provide them with a mitigating factor for having blindly insisted for so long that CO_2 is the root of any warming that may or may not have occurred over the last 40 years or so.

You see its easy to be a skeptic and doubt what others do. It’s hard to be a scientist like Leif.

Mosher, I followed your link and its just a bunch of graphs, impossible to interpret.

But clearly you have done an analysis and are waiting to deliver a gotcha.

I’m neutral on the GCR theory, but if a phenomena is found with weak statistical support, the next step is a bigger study of the same form.

A couple of other points; there are problems with the satellite cloud data, and I have seen data indicating a nighttime cloud increase. Whether this is GCR related I don’t know, but it’s a possibility. Another point is that Europe’s topography is very different to North America – east-west plains and mountains, while NA has north-south orientation, and common phenomena in Europe like radiation fog are fairly unusual in NA.

I agree surface measures of solar radiation is a good proxy for clouds. As is DLWR at night.

The GCR effect (if there is one) may have an aerosol interaction or only occur in other circumstances, such as high humidity environments.

Anyway if the original Serbian study has validity, then you should find significant deviations from the temperature climatology.

So my prediction is that an analysis of hourly temperatures after a Forbush Decrease Event will shown significant deviations from the temperature climatology for that hour and day of the year.

And before you raise it, I am well aware of the statistical implications of picking 24 tests. But minimum temperatures are particularly sensitive to cloud (especially low cloud) changes.

Down to -50C: Russians freeze to death as strongest-in-decades winter hits (PHOTOS)
Russia is enduring its harshest winter in over 70 years, with temperatures plunging as low as -50 degrees Celsius. Dozens of people have already died, and almost 150 have been hospitalized.
¬The country has not witnessed such a long cold spell since 1938, meteorologists said, with temperatures 10 to 15 degrees lower than the seasonal norm all over Russia.

“It means that more energy was radiated back to space as well.
TSI has increased 0.2 W/m2 or 0.015% which would raise the temperature 0.01 degree.”

Still missing the point. The ocean received much more energy the last century compared to the previous centuries, and much of it stays there for decades before reradiated. Because of the heat capacity we have to look at energy, not power like you always do, like when saying the solar activity is the same now as hundred years ago, the integral is not. But I think all agree there must be an amplification (or addition).

“The Figure shows that the MWP was ending long before solar activity began to drop”

From wikipedia:
“The Medieval Warm Period (MWP) is generally thought to have occurred from about AD 950–1250″

When does the Steinhilber TSI show the steepest fall last 2000 years? Exactly, around 1250.

Steven Mosher says:
December 21, 2012 at 8:17 amWhen I challenge believers in Svensmark to state a testable hypothesis, they all go silent. Seems they want to claim an effect but not define a test for it.

I am neutral on Svensmark, there is an effect but I am not convinced that is the main driver.
I did this

‘Obviously nothing makes sense to your wild-eyed arm waver. I couldn’t watch past 29 seconds, he was so crazy’ 29 seconds, why does the truth hurt! Not a very good move to admit that you wear blinkers’ What else makes you blind?

‘Explain for us your version of why the recovery from the LIA has been along the same trend line, whether CO2 was low or high’ So who is trying to change the subject now?

‘We can’t debate with a video’ Why not! Is it because there is so much science in it and you would prefer myths? Because there is always a new one coming along!

‘The main drivers of the Little Ice Age cooling were decreased solar activity and increased volcanic activity. These factors cannot﻿ account for the global warming observed over the past 40 years. Furthermore, it is physically incorrect to state that the planet is simply “recovering” from the Little Ice Age.-see Delaygue and Bard 2010.’

‘because there was no single,..period of prolonged cold around the planet. After 1600, there are records of average winters Europe and North America that were as much as 2°C lower(although the third coldest winter in England since 1659 was in 1963)…such as tree-ring records from around the northern hemisphere suggest there﻿ were SEVERAL widespread cold intervals between 1580 and 1850’

“Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.”
……..

lsvalgaard Replies @ December 21, 2012 at 7:57 pm
Or the even greater danger that public policy could become captive of scientific illiterates.
……..
Lief what would you call a bunch of lawyers voted into office who wanted to legislate the value of Pi to equal 3.2.? See: The Indiana Pi Bill of 1897.

The legislatures of most state and federal governments are over run with lawyers not scientists or even business persons. Corporate lobbyists and advocacy groups use tame lawyers to sway these uneducated lawyers. All you have to do is read some of the leaked (Thank you Assange) Congressional Research Service Reports as I did when researching the issue of livestock traceability to know the senators and congressmen are often fed a load of bovine feces.

Believe me reading a pile of those reports forever changed my view of the way the US government works. I was also able to use those reports vs the actual truth to sway a couple of Congressmen.

Producing ‘Scientific Reports’ to use to sway uneducated politicians is now ‘big business’ and just as dirty as the rest of politics.

ferd berple says:
December 22, 2012 at 12:35 am
Temperatures started rising 150 years before CO2. Al Gore already showed that temperature leads CO2. Please try and keep up.
Who says that the rise in temperatures is related [either way] to the change in CO2?
You are being presumptuous

no, leif, sorry, I find ferd simply pointed to the data: temperature rose before CO2 did, if related or not, that is fact.
To say: CO2 the last 300 years has risen considerably as have temperatures… does simply not reflect al the information the data provides, it omits the fact that ferd pointed to.

lsvalgaard says:
December 21, 2012 at 10:27 pm
Nicola Scafetta says:
December 21, 2012 at 10:01 pm
both ACRIM and PMOD clearly show that the TSI minimum in 2008 was lower than the TSI minimum in 1996 by at least 0.2-0.3 W/m^2.
Werner Schmutz at the SORCE 2011 meeting in Sedona admitted that the PMOD decrease was an artifact [i.e. nor due to the Sun] of 0.2 W/m^2. See slide 29 of http://www.leif.org/research/The%20long-term%20variation%20of%20solar%20activity.pdf
”

Leif is a nice guy. Very misleading. We are discussing whether solar activity might have been lower in 2008 than in 1996 as ACRIM and PMOD show for the TSI.

Leif stated that in his slide #29 there is the “demonstration” of a non change of level between the two 1996 and 2008 minima. That slide, of course, does not prove anything but just proposes the opinion of Schmutz that Frolich (who is responsible of the PMOD composite) does not share.

The issue may be solved by looking at alternative solar indexes. Does Leif presentation provide an possible answer? Well these are the slide where some solar index is plotted showing a lower 2008 level than the 1996 level:

A Forbush decrease is related to CME events. What if the cause of a CME also had an impact on the Earth’s climate? What if that impact could go either way? Wouldn’t that lead to a problem in detecting whether a Forbush decrease impacts our climate? That is, in one case the effect is amplified and in another the effect is reduced.

Good questions, right? What causes CMEs? Well, it is hypothesized they are caused by Solar Magnetic Reconnections. Now, we also know magnetism has two opposing charges. So, ……

Carter, you bozo, using New Scientist as your putative authority reduces your credibility down to Lewandowsky levels. Is that the best you can do? Read what Steve Keohane wrote above. Steve has forgotten more about the subject than you have ever learned, puppy.

You falsely assert that “there was no single,..period of prolonged cold around the planet.”

Unlike your incredible New Scientist fantasy source, the charts I provided here were constructed from verifiable peer reviewed data. They show conclusively that the LIA was a global event, and much colder than average Holocene temperatures.

But you will continue in your scientific ignorance, relying on your ridiculous sources, because your incurable cognitive dissonance does not allow you to see reality: the planet has been much colder — and much warmer — at various times during the Holocene, when CO2 levels were far lower. Thus, the effect of CO2 is clearly insignificant. It is so small that it simply does not matter. Even though your mind is closed air tight and impervious to reality, other WUWT readers can see from the data posted what is commonly accepted among scientists: the LIA, like the MWP, the Roman Warm Period, the Minoan Optimum and the Holocene Optimum were worldwide events, as shown by numerous different proxies taken from every continent.

vukcevic says:
December 22, 2012 at 1:50 amPerhaps you should read:
Four centuries of geomagnetic secular variation from historical records
If you do, you’ll find that:
“There is no intensity data from anywhere before 1832, and no measurements in the Arctic before 1882. So ‘data’ is extrapolated in time and space”

Gail Combs says:
December 22, 2012 at 3:35 amBelieve me reading a pile of those reports forever changed my view of the way the US government works.
Good that we agree.

Lars P. says:
December 22, 2012 at 4:34 amI find ferd simply pointed to the data: temperature rose before CO2 did, if related or not, that is fact.
If you go back to the beginning of this ‘subthread’, you’ll find that I was responding to:
Camburn says:
December 21, 2012 at 7:49 am
“CO2 300 years ago did not show any appreciable rise”
and just pointing out that CO2 too has risen the past 300 years.

Nicola Scafetta says:
December 22, 2012 at 6:58 amWell these are the slide where some solar index is plotted showing a lower 2008 level than the 1996 level
And that difference corresponds to a TSI difference of much less than the 0.25 W/m2 you advocate. But then your math isn’t too good. Remember
Nicola Scafetta says:
December 21, 2012 at 10:16 pm5) “Using the cycle average of the Group Sunspot Number as a background variation fails because the GSN itself is flawed”. Really? Group Sunspot Number cannot be properly used for the background variation because it is mathematically bounded by being positive defined, not because they are flawed. You do not know much math, don’t you?
And compare with http://arxiv.org/pdf/astro-ph/0703147.pdf “Reconstruction of solar irradiance using the Group sunspot number”.

“:As such, when they reference papers that support an amplification of solar factors that has consequences beyond its application towards a specific mechanism”
Leif:”IPCC doesn’t think so.”

Then why refer to those papers at all? If all that section was about was disproving the GCR link why not just do that? You don’t need to refer to supposedly spurious correlations to solar proxies to disprove that.

“lsvalgaard says:
December 22, 2012 at 12:08 am
BTW, Bond never talked about ‘amplification’ of anything. He thought is was a straight solar irradiance relationship. So that argument goes out the window.
In the interest of accuracy, he did talk about ocean currents affecting the production of North Atlantic Deep Water, and that can help spread the suggested solar effect.”

Actually, in the interest of *complete* accuracy he refers to salinity changes as **amplifying** the solar influence. This is why the IPCC refers to this paper as implying an amplification … Seriously, any other interpretation is just playing word games.

Shawnhet says:
December 22, 2012 at 7:54 amhe [Bond] refers to salinity changes as **amplifying** the solar influence.
He does that because his primary mechanism [decrease in TSI of 0.25%] only gives him a 0.17 degree decrease in temperature, so he needs a ‘hail Mary’ effect by postulating ‘solar-triggered’ salinity changes. However he does not provide specifics as to what that mechanism might be. This is the perennial problem: invoking unknown or unspecified causes. The IPCC correctly considers what might be only specific cause around [GCR-clouds] and then goes on to show [to their satisfaction] that that mechanism isn’t sufficient. You might disagree with their conclusion, but that is another matter.

Leif:”Then why refer to those papers at all? If all that section was about was disproving the GCR link why not just do that?
Which is what they did, in fact.”

I am willing to accept that arguendo. However, what have *consistently* failed to do was show why accepting this means anything about whether there is any sort of amplification of solar effects and then gone on to *ignore* the *explicit* statements from both the IPCC and the relevant papers. You have even gone to the point of stating that the Bond 2001 paper was not supportive of such an amplification when it clearly was(all the relevant papers were supportive of such an amplification, irrespective of the validity of the GCR link IMO).

Fixed something for LS ( replaced the part he omitted) so that he can start again

“Then why refer to those papers at all? If all that section was about was disproving the GCR link why not just do that? You don’t need to refer to supposedly spurious correlations to solar proxies to disprove that.”
Which is what they did, in fact.

lsvalgaard says:
December 22, 2012 at 7:54 am
vukcevic says:
“There is no intensity data from anywhere before 1832, and no measurements in the Arctic before 1882. So ‘data’ is extrapolated in time and space”

Solar flux, CO2, C14, 10Be or whatever else was not measured in 1832 either, but you do confidently tell us what they were then and many centuries before.

you will see that in the N. Hemisphere there are strong correlations between temperature, geomagnetic activity, tectonics and the solar cycles.
Either Bloxham &Jackson, Loehle and Vukcevic were all extremely lucky, all frauds or most likely the three sets of data they collected (geomagnetic, temperature & tectonics) do represent nature, which you are so eager to refute.
Sir, your assessment that all those correlations are ‘spurious’ is without a doubt the spurious one.

Leif:he [Bond] refers to salinity changes as **amplifying** the solar influence.
He does that because his primary mechanism [decrease in TSI of 0.25%] only gives him a 0.17 degree decrease in temperature, so he needs a ‘hail Mary’ effect by postulating ‘solar-triggered’ salinity changes. However he does not provide specifics as to what that mechanism might be. This is the perennial problem: invoking unknown or unspecified causes. The IPCC correctly considers what might be only specific cause around [GCR-clouds] and then goes on to show [to their satisfaction] that that mechanism isn’t sufficient. You might disagree with their conclusion, but that is another matter.

Ok, first off, to review. We can agree, I hope that the following post is in error and that the Bond paper is supportive of an amplification of solar effects (of some sort), right?

Shawnhet says:
December 21, 2012 at 11:11 pm
As such, when they reference papers that support an amplification of solar factors that has consequences beyond its application towards a specific mechanism
Leif:BTW, Bond never talked about ‘amplification’ of anything. He thought is was a straight solar irradiance relationship. So that argument goes out the window.

Yes, Bond needs what you call a “Hail Mary” to get the magnitude of the effects he observes. This “Hail Mary” is what he, I and the IPCC would call an amplification.

The IPCC might only consider specific mechanisms in detail but that doesn’t preclude them from recognizing other (apparently) significant correlations. They do recognize such a significant correlation in the form of the apparent existence of a solar amplification factor. There is really no other way to interpret the *totality* of what they have written.

And you sound more desperate as the truth dawns on you, that you have being spreading disinformation, but now you have blocked yourself in a corner there is no way out, you’ve got to keep up with the illusion! Just like the King who had no new clothes!

‘Thus, the effect of CO2 is clearly insignificant’ like the 300,000ppm?

lsvalgaard says:
December 22, 2012 at 7:54 am
vukcevic says:
“There is no intensity data from anywhere before 1832, and no measurements in the Arctic before 1882. So ‘data’ is extrapolated in time and space”

There is no solar flux, CO2, C14, 10Be or whatever was measured in 1832 either, but you confidently telling us what they are.

you will see that in the N. Hemisphere there are correlation between temperature, geomagnetic activity, tectonics and the solar cycles.
Either Bloxham &Jackson, Loehle and Vukcevic were all extremely lucky, all wrong or most likely the three sets of data they collected (geomagnetic, temperature & tectonics) do represent nature, which you are so eager to refute.
Your assessment that all those correlations are ‘spurious’ is without a doubt the spurious one.

Shawnhet says:
December 22, 2012 at 8:49 amall the relevant papers were supportive of such an amplification
I would rather put it this way: since the solar changes are so small, supporters of the notion that the Sun is the major driver need to invoke unspecified or unknown ‘amplification’ mechanisms. This does not mean that any such mechanisms actually are operating as it has not been established that the Sun is a major driver.
On Bond: as he correctly relalizes that TSI won’t do it, he needs an ‘additional’ mechanism. This is not an ‘amplification’ of the TSI influence.

thisisnotgoodtogo says:
December 22, 2012 at 8:50 amFixed something for LS
This is still not good to go.

vukcevic says:
December 22, 2012 at 9:14 amThere is no solar flux, CO2, C14, 10Be or whatever was measured in 1832 either, but you confidently telling us what they are.
The solar flux can be followed back to 1722, 14C and 10Be can be measured some 10,000 years back, sunspots back to 1610.

lsvalgaard says: December 22, 2012 at 9:22 am
………
Dr. S
Are you saying that the palaeomagnetism is rubbish, and reversals of the Earth’s magnetic field are ‘spurious’ clams, since according to you nothing is known about the Earth’s magnetic field variability before 1832 ?

Leif:”I would rather put it this way: since the solar changes are so small, supporters of the notion that the Sun is the major driver need to invoke unspecified or unknown ‘amplification’ mechanisms. This does not mean that any such mechanisms actually are operating as it has not been established that the Sun is a major driver.
On Bond: as he correctly relalizes that TSI won’t do it, he needs an ‘additional’ mechanism. This is not an ‘amplification’ of the TSI influence.”

I agree that we don’t know the mechanism but it is well nigh impossible to explain the sorts of relationships Bond and others find without assuming that something else is going on. It is prefectly reasonable even in the absence of understanding of that mechanism to believe in that amplification. It is *possible* that this is mistaken but nothing has been brought up that shows that it is. All science is tentative, obviously.

In re: what Bond is actually saying, I don’t understand your point at all (it seems so obviously false). Here is the man in his own words.

From his paper:”The surface hydrographic changes may have affected production of North Atlantic Deep Water, potentially providing an additional mechanism for amplifying the
solar signals and transmitting them globally”

Abstract:
We present two new multi-proxy reconstructions of the extra-tropical Northern Hemisphere (30–90° N) mean temperature: a two-millennia long reconstruction reaching back to AD 1 based on 32 proxies and a 500-yr long reconstruction reaching back to AD 1500 based on 5 91 proxies. The proxies are of different types and of different resolutions (annual, annual-to-decadal, and decadal) but all have previously been shown to relate to local or regional temperature. We use a reconstruction method, LOC, that recently has been shown to confidently reproduce low-frequency variability. Confidence intervals are obtained by an ensemble pseudo-proxy method that both estimates the vari10 ance and the bias of the reconstructions. The two-millennia long reconstruction shows a well defined Medieval Warm Period with a peak warming ca. AD 950–1050 reaching 0.7°C relative to the reference period AD 1880–1960. The 500-yr long reconstruction confirms previous results obtained with the LOC method applied to a smaller proxy compilation; in particular it shows the Little Ice Age cumulating in AD 1580–1720 with 15 a temperature minimum of −1.1°C below the reference period. The reconstructed local temperatures, the magnitude of which are subject to wide confidence intervals, show a rather geographically homogeneous LIA while more geographical inhomogeneities are found for the Medieval Warm Period. Reconstructions based on different number of proxies show only small differences suggesting that LOC reconstructs 50-yr smoothed 20 extra-tropical NH mean temperatures well and that low-frequency noise in the proxies is a relatively small problem.

We analyse the spatio-temporal patterns of temperature variability over Northern Hemisphere land areas, on centennial time-scales, for the last 12 centuries using an unprecedentedly large network of temperature-sensitive proxy records. Geographically widespread positive temperature anomalies are observed from the 9th to 11th centuries, similar in extent and magnitude to the 20th century mean. A dominance of widespread negative anomalies is observed from the 16th to 18th centuries. Though we find the amplitude and spatial extent of the 20th century warming is within the range of natural variability over the last 12 centuries, we also find that the rate of warming from the 19th to the 20th century is unprecedented in the context of the last 1200 yr. The positive Northern Hemisphere temperature change from the 19th to the 20th century is clearly the largest between any two consecutive centuries in the past 12 centuries. These results remain robust even after removing a significant number of proxies in various tests of robustness showing that the choice of proxies has no particular influence on the overall conclusions of this study.

As I helpfully explained to you: Unlike your incredible New Scientist fantasy source, the charts I provided here were constructed from verifiable peer reviewed data. They show conclusively that the LIA was a global event, and it was much colder than average Holocene temperatures.

You put yourself in the untenable position of arguing with ice core data and other proxies, and with extensive peer reviewed data, and with the vast preponderance of scientists who know that the LIA and the MWP were global events. There is no doubt about the LIA, but it rocks your belief system, so you impotently argue about it.

You refuse to accept any data that contradicts your wild-eyed belief system. That places you squarely in the climate True Believer cult. Science has nothing to do with your belief, and your belief has nothing to do with science.

It is a fact that global warming has stalled. It may resume. Or not. But your belief that “carbon” is at fault for global warming is contradicted by Planet Earth.

So, what should we believe? What Carter is saying? Or what Planet Earth is saying? Becuase they are mutually contradictory. For myself, I do not accept the pseudo-scientific ranting of lunatics. I accept what the ultimate Authority, the planet, is telling us. But Carter refuses to listen to Planet Earth.

Run along now, Carter, and go watch your propaganda videos, since you are not capable of debating or refuting the facts — like the ones Gail Combs just provided for your edification. You could learn plenty from them. But you won’t. The cognitive dissonance between reality and your fantasy might make your head explode. We wouldn’t want that, would we?

vukcevic says:
December 22, 2012 at 10:17 amAre you saying that the palaeomagnetism is rubbish, and reversals of the Earth’s magnetic field are ‘spurious’ clams, since according to you nothing is known about the Earth’s magnetic field variability before 1832 ?
Paleomagnetic measurements of the intensity and polarity going back thousands or millions of years are largely correct [with large errorbars, of course]. What is rubbish is the belief that that data is correct, or can be even estimated, on an annual basis and in areas where there is no data [such as the Arctic and Antarctic]. The spherical harmonic coefficients can be calculated from actual data and from those we can approximate the field at those data points, but not with any accuracy in areas where there is no data [we cannot make up data where there is none].

Shawnhet says:
December 22, 2012 at 10:22 amI agree that we don’t know the mechanism but it is well nigh impossible to explain the sorts of relationships Bond and others find without assuming that something else is going on. It is perfectly reasonable even in the absence of understanding of that mechanism to believe in that amplification. It is *possible* that this is mistaken but nothing has been brought up that shows that it is. All science is tentative, obviously.
The ‘Bond events’ with a near 1500 yr period are not found in modern reconstructions of solar activity, e.g. http://www.leif.org/research/TSI-10000-yrs.png from http://www.leif.org/EOS/PNAS-2012-Steinhilber-Appendix.pdf so the ‘evidence’ is weak.

From his paper:”The surface hydrographic changes may have affected production of North Atlantic Deep Water, potentially providing an additional mechanism for amplifying the solar signals and transmitting them globally”
As I said, I have discussed these thing personally with the late Gerard Bond and what he is hinting at is that TSI must have some effect [with which I agree], but since that effect is too small to explain large climatic changes, he thinks there must be ‘an additional [and different]’ mechanism at work. This is not to thought of as an ‘amplification’ of the small TSI effect, but as a way of getting more out of the small solar changes [perhaps of a different nature: UV, GCRs, whatever]. What that additional mechanism might be, he does not speculate on [just says ‘solar-triggered’]. A hypothesis that is en vogue is the GCR-cloud one and that is why IPCC chooses to look at that one, rather than speculate about unknown and unspecified ‘solar triggers’. This is perfectly reasonable to me, and does not mean that IPCC endorses the unknown and unspecified triggers.

lgl says:
December 22, 2012 at 3:21 amWhen does the Steinhilber TSI show the steepest fall last 2000 years? Exactly, around 1250.
Gail Combs says:
December 22, 2012 at 10:43 amThe two-millennia long reconstruction shows a well defined Medieval Warm Period with a peak warming ca. AD 950–1050
So, the Earth’s climate knows how to predict solar changes 200 years ahead of time. Perhaps you should do some more integrations.

The claim that 1985 is the peak was only based on Sun Spot Numbers and even this isn’t correct with the peak declining after 1987 using 121 month mean. TSI shows the peak recently between 1977 and 1995 with global temperatures not warming much longer than this period. Only 3 years later with the big 1997/98 El Nino did global temperatures continue to rise, especially when taking the change in low global cloud albedo into account.

When taking changes in global low cloud into account these explain the warming of the planet since the 1980’s. Declining low level cloud warms the surface because the energy from the sun increases it’s surface area. Therefore it is the sun that’s done it indirectly, but what caused the decline in low level clouds?

Can’t be CO2 because it it would produce more water vapor and increase low cloud levels. Could be the sun’s affect on the atmosphere by changing the position of the jet stream across the hemisphere’s, particularly since 2007. This theory can quickly change the atmosphere without changing the ocean heat content at first, so we see changes in weather patterns, but little change in the ocean heat content at least at first. With decreased low cloud albedo compared with previous decades, explains why global temperatures are still in the warmish levels before the energy from the oceans get chance to release. An increase in low cloud global levels only need to change by about 3 or 4 percent to bring us back to 1970’s levels.

Leif:”The ‘Bond events’ with a near 1500 yr period are not found in modern reconstructions of solar activity,”

I’m sorry but this is a little opaque to me. Are you saying that TSI doesn’t change as much as Bond assumed at the time of his paper or that the actual measurements he was using (ie for carbon-14 or whatever) are wrong? If the former, I can’t see how that impacts the idea that an amplification is suggested at all(except to suggest that the amplification may need to be higher).

” This is not to thought of as an ‘amplification’ of the small TSI effect, but as a way of getting more out of the small solar changes [perhaps of a different nature: UV, GCRs, whatever]. ”

??? Uh, getting more out of the small solar changes is just another way of saying that the small solar changes are amplified somehow.

REPLY: It got caught be the SPAM filter due to word combinations, and still in moderation, and mods brought it to my attention. Tell you what, if you want to denigrate rather than debate, put your full name to your claims, as I do, and then your comment would be on par with what I do every day, putting my name to this entire website. Ball’s in your court.

Shawnhet says:
December 22, 2012 at 11:23 amAre you saying that TSI doesn’t change as much as Bond assumed at the time of his paper
The dips or minima do not recur at the 1500-yr period he suggests.

??? Uh, getting more out of the small solar changes is just another way of saying that the small solar changes are amplified somehow.
Here is one interpretation: TSI has some small effect. A much larger effect is due to GCR-clouds [say]. The latter is not an amplification of the former [different mechanisms].

Shawnhet says:
December 22, 2012 at 11:23 amAre you saying that TSI doesn’t change as much as Bond assumed at the time of his paper
The dips or minima do not recur at the 1500-yr period he suggests.
I’m saying that the situation is complex and not so clear cut as Bond assumed. I don’t have the full thesis manuscript, but this abstract illustrates some of the problems:
Glacial North Atlantic millennial variability over the last 300,000 years
Obrochta, Stephen Phillip
Thesis (Ph.D.)–Duke University, 2008.; Publication Number: AAI3336170;
The hematite-stained grain (HSG) proxy method, commonly employed by the late G.C. Bond to detect the “1500-year cycle” in North Atlantic climate, is reproduced and verified for the first time. The exact method is compiled from various sources and presented in Chapter 1. In Chapter 2, an HSG record from classic North Atlantic DSDP Site 609 is reconsidered. While the Site 609 HSG record was initially interpreted to exhibit 1500-year variability, it did not actually contain spectral power at the 1500-year band. The chronology for Site 609 is based on radicarbon dates to 26 ka, beyond which the sea surface temperature record is matched to the record of air temperature variations over Greenland from the GISP2 ice core. However, it is now evident that the lack of spectral power at the primary period of the observed fluctuation was likely due to the GISP2 chronology, which has been subsequently shown to become progressively deficient over the course of the last glaciation. Updating the Site 609 chronology to the latest chronology for the virtually complete NGRIP Greenland ice core, which is based on layer counting to 60 ka, results in 99% significant spectral power at a 1/1415 year frequency. In Chapter 3, the classic Site 609 lithic records are extended to the previous two glaciations, glacial Stages 6 and 8, at IODP Site U1308 (reoccupied Site 609). The “1500-year cycle” is not detected within Stage 6, perhaps indicating that D-O Events were not manifest in a similar fashion, if at all. Heinrich Event are also not detected, indicating relative stability of the North American Laurentide Ice Sheet during Stage 6. As a result, individual North Atlantic sites recorded loweriv amplitude, asynchronous hydrographic changes. The SST proxy record at Site U1308 during Stage 6 primarily records intermediate temperatures. The subtle SST changes detected likely indicate local as opposed to basin-scale changes related to the migration of oceanic frontal boundaries. During Stage 6, benthic delta13 C changes are of lower amplitude than Stages 2–4 and correspond more strongly to variations in SST than to ice rafting, indicating that ice-rafting events did not as strongly influence NADW formation. During Stage 8, however, well-structured cycles in HSG with a mean event spacing of ˜1500 +/- 500 years are detected, potentially indicating a greater likelihood of D-O Events during Stage 8. In addition, three Heinrich Events, defined by a large abundance of DC, occurred during MIS 8, indicating surging of the Laurentide Ice Sheet Ice Sheet. Stage 8 is therefore more analogous to that of the last glaciation than Stage 6. Chapter 4 explores the link between HSG and cosmogenic nuclide production, which are highly coherent at a frequency of 1/950 years. A 950-year period is present in the HSG records of the last three glaciations. While a 950-year oscillation may be the product of solar forcing, due to uncertainty in paleomagnetic reconstructions and in the Site U1308 chronology, the null hypothesis that the HSG proxy does not reflect variable solar irradiance cannot be unequivocally refuted. Solar forcing does however provide an explanation for climate variability in the 950-year band during the last three glaciations.
—–
Note the lip-service paid to possible solar forcing in the last sentence [good for funding of further research]

From his paper:”The surface hydrographic changes may have affected production of North Atlantic Deep Water, potentially providing an additional mechanism for amplifying the solar signals and transmitting them globally”

Natural variability of the North Atlantic can be directly associated with Sun – Earth interactions via number of intermediary steps.

FAO A Watts
‘put your full name to your claims, as I do’, big deal! ‘and then your comment would be on par with what I do every day’ I doubt that!

REPLY: Your denigration comment claims by insinuation that because of who I am I have no right to an opinion. Therefore my counter is that as an anonymous coward, neither do you, but give you a chance to elevate yourself. You have chosen snark over personal integrity, choosing to shoot denigration from behind the veil of anonymity instead. It says much about you. What sort of background do you have that qualifies you to have an opinion (but I don’t )?
You might want to read my about page – Anthony

Arno Arrak says:
December 21, 2012 at 3:41 pm
This non scientist thanks you for your clear and consise comment. And of course Bob Tisdale for his many detailed graphs and explanations on same subject.

This is my probably stupid question for the great minds out there in blogville. If the late last century El Niño caused the so called “unprecedented” CO2 driven warming that the warmistas keep banging on about what is the link between anthropogenic CO2 and that 1998 El Niño?

LOL perhaps the warmistas will convince me that the 1998 El Niño didn’t cause the step up warming.

lsvalgaard says:
December 22, 2012 at 11:31 amHere is one interpretation: TSI has some small effect. A much larger effect is due to GCR-clouds [say]. The latter is not an amplification of the former [different mechanisms].
BTW, Bond did not believe in the GCR-cloud mechanism, mainly because of the lack of climate response to the Laschamp geomagnetic event about 40,000 years ago.

Leif:”Here is one interpretation: TSI has some small effect. A much larger effect is due to GCR-clouds [say]. The latter is not an amplification of the former [different mechanisms].”

Well, not to beat a dead horse here, no one is claiming that the TSI itself is increased by some unknown mechanism. Rather the point is that some unknown mechanism might act in tandem with TSI to make the overall effect on the *climate* bigger.

In re: the paper you link above, I thought you might be interested in the most recent work done by its author which still seems consistent with the solar amplification model. (I don’t have access to the paper)

Ice-rafting evidence for a “1500-year cycle” sparked considerable debate on millennial-scale climate change and the role of solar variability. Here, we reinterpret the last 70,000 years of the subpolar North Atlantic record, focusing on classic DSDP Site 609, in the context of newly available raw data, the latest radiocarbon calibration (Marine09) and ice core chronology (GICC05), and a wider range of statistical methodologies. A ∼1500-year oscillation is primarily limited to the short glacial Stage 4, the age of which is derived solely from an ice flow model (ss09sea), subject to uncertainty, and offset most from the original chronology. Results from the most well-dated, younger interval suggest that the original 1500 ± 500 year cycle may actually be an admixture of the ∼1000 and ∼2000 cycles that are observed within the Holocene at multiple locations. In Holocene sections these variations are coherent with 14C and 10Be estimates of solar variability. Our new results suggest that the “1500-year cycle” may be a transient phenomenon whose origin could be due, for example, to ice sheet boundary conditions for the interval in which it is observed. We therefore question whether it is necessary to invoke such exotic explanations as heterodyne frequencies or combination tones to explain a phenomenon of such fleeting occurrence that is potentially an artifact of arithmetic averaging.

Note the section which states the variations are coherent with the estimates of solar variability.

@ Gail Combs re: “Producing ‘Scientific Reports’ to use to sway uneducated politicians is now ‘big business’ and just as dirty as the rest of politics.”

Thanks Gail and skeptics. You all are fighting the good fight. Frankly, I’m both angry and saddened that science has been hijacked by activists with anti-people agendas.

For those Looking for a good cause other than the insane CO2 fight, I suggest: access to clean water, industrial pollution, malaria, childhood immunization, habitat destruction, human trafficking, many more….

Shawnhet says:
December 22, 2012 at 1:07 pmWell, not to beat a dead horse here, no one is claiming that the TSI itself is increased by some unknown mechanism. Rather the point is that some unknown mechanism might act in tandem with TSI to make the overall effect on the *climate* bigger.
It was not about TSI itself being increased but the effect of TSI. ‘In tandem’ means then in addition to, not an ‘amplification’ of the original TSI effect.

A re-examination of evidence for the North Atlantic “1500-year cycle” at Site 609
Stephen P. Obrochta, , , Hiroko Miyahara, Yusuke Yokoyama, Thomas J. Crowley
Thanks for the reference. BTW, Hiroko is a good friend of mine, I’ll ask her for the paper.

Note the section which states the variations are coherent with the estimates of solar variability.
In ‘sections’, but not overall. You can always find ‘sections’ where wiggles agree with any two time series. The image remains of a much less clear correlation than in Bond et al. 2001 [perhaps IPCC should not even reference Bond 2001].

Shawnhet says:
December 22, 2012 at 1:07 pmWell, not to beat a dead horse here, no one is claiming that the TSI itself is increased by some unknown mechanism. Rather the point is that some unknown mechanism might act in tandem with TSI to make the overall effect on the *climate* bigger.
It is comforting that IPCC does not consider ‘some unknown mechanism’ to be worthy of mention.

“peak warming ca. AD 950–1050″ does not mean the MWP ended in 1050, what’s your source for such claim?
We have been through this before. The drop around 1100 was caused by 5 VEI5 eruptions, but it didn’t end the MWP. Temperature was still at ~1900-level.

lsvalgaard says:
December 22, 2012 at 12:53 pm
………….
No usual objections from Svalgaard of Stanford !
In that case the North Atlantic’s Natural Variability has to be a must read for all the AGWs aficionados and skeptics alike

I’ve started from the North working my way to the South, eventually will get there too.
Looking at the circumpolar temperature wave and its possible link to the geomagnetic oscillations; it appears to be the second harmonic (twice the frequency) from Jackson-Bloxham data, which is a bit odd.

[snip – quoting potholer54 is not only off-topic, but irrelevant. Good try at ducking the issue though – Anthony]

How is potholer irrelevant? Look at who is try to duck the issue now? Why does potholer frighten you so much? I can only guess. Is it because he busted Monckton?

REPLY: Nope, its because A, it is irrelevant to this thread, B, he’s been given a full right of response here to Monckton http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/01/11/monckton-responds-to-potholer54/ making it old news, and C, your comment history here shows that every time you get into a difficult discussion that doesn’t go your way you throw this out instead of actually debating the topic at hand.

For all I know, “Carter, David” is just another fake name for “potholer54″, since both are from England and that’s where your comments originate from. So far, you’ve demonstrated no integrity, only noisy denigration in place of real debate.

So, I don’t let you get away with it. Be as upset as you wish, and Merry Christmas. – Anthony

Leif:”It was not about TSI itself being increased but the effect of TSI. ‘In tandem’ means then in addition to, not an ‘amplification’ of the original TSI effect.”

There is no distinction here to be drawn. Check out the IPCC quote at the top of the page. Quite clearly Bond and the other papers are talking about amplifications, Bond *specifically* talks about one and the IPCC accepts that the GCR-cloud link would be (were it true) one mechanism that could account for such an *amplification*. I don’t know what point you are trying to argue, but you are wrong about this.

“Note the section which states the variations are coherent with the estimates of solar variability.
In ‘sections’, but not overall.

You can always find ‘sections’ where wiggles agree with any two time series. The image remains of a much less clear correlation than in Bond et al. 2001 [perhaps IPCC should not even reference Bond 2001].”

That is not how I read the abstract but as I said previously I do not have access to the paper. I think it is more likely that outside of the recent Holocene we do not have good enough data to make the same sorts of claims for older periods that we do for recent periods. My understanding is that we do not have finegrained enough proxies for that. It would be pretty peculiar to state that recent timeframes were consistent with solar driven effects when such solar driven effects were contra-indicated in your own study.

Shawnhet says:
December 22, 2012 at 2:11 pmQuite clearly Bond and the other papers are talking about amplifications, Bond *specifically* talks about one and the IPCC accepts that the GCR-cloud link would be (were it true) one mechanism that could account for such an *amplification*. I don’t know what point you are trying to argue
I’m making the point that if there are two mechanisms working independently of each other, one is not an amplification of the other. And that IPCC is rightfully ignoring unknown mechanisms.

That is not how I read the abstract
Of course not, given your a priory disposition, but have already put in a request to Hiroko for the paper, the we can see.

with solar driven effects when such solar driven effects were contra-indicated in your own study
I have not made any such studies for anything else but solar activity.

REPLY: There’s an old saying, demonstrated here by you. “Never mud wrestle with a pig, you get dirty, and the pig likes it.” That pretty much sums up your appearances here, as well as many other potholer54 proponents. It wouldn’t matter what I say, what Monckton would say, or anyone else would say for that matter, if it disagrees with you, you’ll trot out the (pick one) “hidden agenda, big oil, conspiracy, denier, afraid”, etc. It’s stock in trade these days. There’s a huge difference between “chickening out” and learning when it is a complete waste of time to try communicating any further. You’ve aptly demonstrated here what a complete waste of time your off-topic arguments are. This thread has nothing to do with either of these personalities or your opinions of them. You won’t answer questions directly, and like I said, you may very well be “potholer54″ trying to stir the pot again, since just as Matt Ridley from the UK is in the USA now (from England on holiday) who knows where “potholer54″ is right now. You’ve not provided any evidence of who you really are, so I’ll just leave it at that.

Aethist? OK. Have a Merry Christmas, and may Gaia have mercy on your soul. We’re done here as your thread disruption is now at an end. – Anthony

Leif:”I’m making the point that if there are two mechanisms working independently of each other, one is not an amplification of the other. And that IPCC is rightfully ignoring unknown mechanisms.”

I really don’t understand you at all. No one is talking about two things that independent of one another. You claimed that the GCR link was not an amplification of solar effects but it is clearly not independent of them.

“That is not how I read the abstract
Of course not, given your a priory disposition, but have already put in a request to Hiroko for the paper, the we can see.”

Since you are apparently having huge problems with what it even means to be anplified, I would not so glib in assuming that you understand what my a priori views on solar amplification are.

“with solar driven effects when such solar driven effects were contra-indicated in your own study
I have not made any such studies for anything else but solar activity.”

This was a bit confusing so I’ll rephrase: It would be pretty odd for Obrochta et al. to reference a coherence between solar effects and ocean changes for one period if such coherence was effectively contra-indicated in their paper.

lsvalgaard says:
December 22, 2012 at 10:35 am
“thisisnotgoodtogo says:
December 22, 2012 at 10:29 am
You’re a believer, not a thinker.
Now, this is good to go: 95% of the commenters here are believers, too.”

You may be correct about the 95%, although I would put it a bit lower than this. Certainly this site welcomes a higher proportion of thinkers than most. On this subject, one must guard against becoming fossilized in his thinking – defending one’s old ideas unto death, permitting nothing of the stream of evolving science into the sanctuary. A thinker who stops thinking is no longer a thinker. It would be terrible if it were to be discovered that the sun is more important in earthly affairs than you are prepared to think.

I’m a long-time wuwt non-technical reader – liberal arts, with general physics, chemistry and mathematics. Can anyone suggest a great wuwt article or three that I absolutely must read over the holidays?

lgl says:
December 22, 2012 at 2:42 pmYou can find the five VEI5s here: http://www.volcano.si.edu/world/largeeruptions.cfm
Which also includes the ones that [supposed by some] started the LIA and [certainly] the dip at the Dalton Minimum.
With enough variables in play you can fit anything.

Shawnhet says:
December 22, 2012 at 3:17 pmI really don’t understand you at all. No one is talking about two things that independent of one another. You claimed that the GCR link was not an amplification of solar effects but it is clearly not independent of them.
Perhaps it is because I think as a physicist and do not conflate effects from different causes. But it seems that we cannot get out of that grove [beginning to sound like broken records] so suffice it to say that it is reasonable that IPCC does not wish to include unknown mechanisms in their considerations, which I agree with. The corollary of that is that they are not ‘sneakily’ [Rawls: ‘snuck in’] suggesting that their refusal to do so is a ‘game-changer'; they are playing their standard game of only referring to documented and plausible specific causes, which I also agree with [although many of their other actions and procedures are disagreeable].

Yet, while the planet has steadily
warmed, NH winters have recently grown more extreme
across the major industrialized centres. Record cold snaps and
heavy snowfall events across the United States, Europe and
East Asia garnered much public attention during the winters
of 2009/10 and 2010/11 (Blunden et al 2011, Cohen et al
2010). Cohen et al (2009) argued that the occurrence of
more severe NH winter weather is a two-decade-long trend
starting around 1988. Whether the recent colder winters are a
consequence of internal variability or a response to changes in
boundary forcings resulting from climate change remains an
open question.

I did some checking to see if there really was some global cooling in the post 1985 era
. 1]The winter temperatures for Contiguous United States has been dropping since 1990 at -0.26 F per decade [per NCDC]
2]8 of the 11 climate regions in other parts of Canada showed declining winter temperature departures for 15 years since 1998
3] The winter temperature departures from 1961-1990 mean normals for land and sea regions of Europe have been flat or even slightly dropping for 20 year or since 1990
4] I have not checked all of Russia but Moscow winter temperatures have been declining since 1988

Personally I believe there is much more coming as solar sunspots decline even further to the next solar minimum and possibly for the next two solar cycles.

Gary Pearse says:
December 22, 2012 at 4:30 pmIt would be terrible if it were to be discovered that the sun is more important in earthly affairs than you are prepared to think.
Actually not. I’m hoping, praying that I’m wrong, as that would increase funding for my branch of science [perhaps even for me] considerably.

herkimer says:
December 22, 2012 at 4:53 pmbut you would be surprised at the cooling that has taken place after 1985 especially during the winters.
You are running up against folks like lgl and Rawls who preach that there are enormous lags and thermal inertia involved, so no way can the ‘sun begin to cool’ the Earth yet [as some commenters put it].

The modification by Hansen and company from a reference global average temperature of 15C to 14C would indicate a cooling of 0.5C in their own words; no?
What year did this change slip in play?
This climatology is hard, what with the shifting goal posts, various nonstandard references, undefined periods of time and Alice in wonderland language.

Leif:I really don’t understand you at all. No one is talking about two things that independent of one another. You claimed that the GCR link was not an amplification of solar effects but it is clearly not independent of them.
Perhaps it is because I think as a physicist and do not conflate effects from different causes.”

Respectfully, I think it is just that you are/were confused about what the IPCC is talking about. You claimed that the GCR cloud link would not be an amplification when the IPCC explicitly claimed the opposite. This does not make it easy to communicate on this issue with you at all (since what an “amplification” means to the climate is at the core of this issue).

From my POV, very early in this thread you laid down the real reason you have for dismissing the proposed solar amplification(as the IPCC uses the term) effect. IYO, 1.the GCR link has been disproved and 2.that hypothesis is the last one standing. As I said, way back then, you have never given any evidence for 2. without which the proper response is to keep an open mind about solar amplification. With sufficiently good evidence, it would be perfectly acceptable to conclude that a solar amplification takes place even without *any* knowledge of the specific mechanism. We do not have that evidence yet IMO, but there is a great deal of highly suggestive stuff out there IMO including the three papers listed explicitly by the IPCC.

Shawnhet says:
December 22, 2012 at 8:37 pmFrom my POV, very early in this thread you laid down the real reason you have for dismissing the proposed solar amplification(as the IPCC uses the term) effect. IYO, 1.the GCR link has been disproved and 2.that hypothesis is the last one standing.
You keep saying that, but saying it often still does not make it true.
My reason is as follows: the GCR-cloud link is specific and has some physical background, all the other ones that I know of [and which may be mentioned in the papers] are nebulous, unknown, unspecified, and mysterious ‘triggers’ or ‘amplifiers or feedbacks’ and as such cannot be seriously considered or quantified [given that we discount TSI for being too weak]. For that reason it makes sense to adopt the stance that IPCC has.

As I said, way back then, you have never given any evidence for 2. without which the proper response is to keep an open mind about solar amplification.
Science does not operate with an ‘open mind’, but with a ruthless culling of nebulous thought.

With sufficiently good evidence, it would be perfectly acceptable to conclude that a solar amplification takes place even without *any* knowledge of the specific mechanism.
The evidence is in my opinion not good. An example is the Bond 2001 ‘evidence’ that when examined critically seems to evaporate into artifacts, dating errors, and uncertainties, with little of the original certitude left.

We do not have that evidence yet IMO, but there is a great deal of highly suggestive stuff out there IMO including the three papers listed explicitly by the IPCC.
As I understand the two non-Bond papers, no other mechanisms are suggested. The Ram and Stoltz paper, for example, is quite specific about that ( http://www.leif.org/EOS/1999GL900199.pdf ) “In summary, our work, and that of Svensmark and Friis-Christensen (1997), seems to show that changes in cloud cover due to solar influences affects terrestrial precipitation patterns and, as a result, the aridity of the Greenland dust source areas”. no invocation of ‘amplification’ or the like. You are presuming too much.

We do not have that evidence yet IMO, but there is a great deal of highly suggestive stuff out there IMO including the three papers listed explicitly by the IPCC
As I understand the two non-Bond papers, no other mechanisms or different ‘amplifications’ are suggested. etc…

As Muscheler (2007) and many other papers point out, differences between 10Be records from Antarctica and Greenland indicate that climatic changes have influenced the deposition of 10Be during some periods of the last 1000 yr and that a significant part of the record does not reflect production [i..e solar activity], but deposition [i.e. climate].

Just to be clear: I don’t know what caused the late 20th century warming and I don’t even know what all the possibilities might be. The fact remains that those who are already convinced that increases in CO2 caused most if not all of the late 20th century warming have presented only two reasons why solar activity has been (or should be) ignored as a contender: 1) the variation in TSI is too small to explain the warming, and 2) any solar variation that correlates to or is proxied by sunspots would have had to peak prior to the peak in warming. Those of us that remain unconvinced that CO2 caused the late 20th century warming reject these two reasons on the grounds that 1) the variation in TSI does not fully encapsulate the variation in solar output traits capable of influencing Earth’s climate, 2) that in all well known and understood warming cycles the temperature peak lags the peak of the warming’s cause, 3) the potential for amplifying mechanisms to enhance aspects of solar variation, and 4) the possibility of solar variations which do not correlate to sunspots; and implore climate science to fully investigate solar variation as a possible cause of the late 20th century warming.

John West says:
December 22, 2012 at 10:48 pm
How are these two different:2) any solar variation that correlates to or is proxied by sunspots would have had to peak prior to the peak in warming.
and2) that in all well known and understood warming cycles the temperature peak lags the peak of the warming’s cause

lsvalgaard says:”Given a variation in solar output of 0.1%, the resulting temperature change is a quarter of that, i.e. 0.025% which of 288K is 0.07 degrees”

While I agree that an increase in temperature of a grey body with approximately equivalent emissivity as Earth of 0.07 degrees from 288K would necessarily result in and increase in radiant emission from that body equivalent to approximately 0.1% of total solar output, I disagree that the Stephan-Boltzman Law can be applied in reverse. The resulting temperature which is not a measure of all internal energies from the absorption of a particular amount of radiation cannot be determined in this manner. Starting from the same temperature an amount of copper and the same amount of water both absorbing the same amount of radiation will not have the same resulting temperature.

John West says:
December 22, 2012 at 10:48 pm
How are these two different:
2) any solar variation that correlates to or is proxied by sunspots would have had to peak prior to the peak in warming.
and
2) that in all well known and understood warming cycles the temperature peak lags the peak of the warming’s cause

Pretty much no difference at all except one is used to explain away solar variation as a potential driver of 20th century temperature increase and the other is illustrating why that is nonsense.

1st 2) is saying sunspots peaked before temperatures peaked therefore it couldn’t be the sunspots or anything that correlates with sunspots since the peaks don’t coincide.

2nd 2) is saying that this same pattern happens with all drivers of temperature that occurs in cycles.

Read like:
2) any solar variation that correlates to or is proxied by sunspots would have had to peak [according to the data] prior to the peak in warming [therefore couldn’t be the cause].

NOT read like:
2) any solar variation that correlates to or is proxied by sunspots would have had to peak prior to the peak in warming [for the warming to have been caused by the sunspot correlated mechanism].

Poor wording choice on my part. Although the “NOT read like” version is what my actual position is, the cause peak actually should precede the temperature peak if it’s a cause – effect relationship.

John West says:The resulting temperature which is not a measure of all internal energies from the absorption of a particular amount of radiation cannot be determined in this manner.

To further clarify what I’m talking about:

Let’s say we have two bodies with exactly the same emissivity but different heat capacities.

If I heat both bodies to the same temperature they will emit the same amount of radiation.

But, if both absorb the same amount of radiation from the same initial temperature they will not have the same final temperature.

Therefore, we can calculate a body’s temperature from just its emissions and its emissivity, but cannot calculate the temperature a body “should” be from incoming radiation from its point of view from the emissivity and the radiation alone.

Leif:”You keep saying that, but saying it often still does not make it true.
My reason is as follows: the GCR-cloud link is specific and has some physical background, all the other ones that I know of [and which may be mentioned in the papers] are nebulous, unknown, unspecified, and mysterious ‘triggers’ or ‘amplifiers or feedbacks’ and as such cannot be seriously considered or quantified [given that we discount TSI for being too weak]. For that reason it makes sense to adopt the stance that IPCC has.”

Yes, I understand your reasoning. However, it is fallacious ie your conclusions do not follow from your premises. If the temperature effect of the 11 year solar cycle were 10 times the size it is currently, your logic would be arguing in favor of ignoring this implied amplification because we wouldn’t know what caused it. Obviously, this would cause us to miss potentially valid hypotheses.

“Science does not operate with an ‘open mind’, but with a ruthless culling of nebulous thought.”

LOL! Unfortunately, such ruthless culling of nebulousness does not appear to extend to the definition of amplification ;)

Seriously, though, without an open mind, no truly original hypothesis would ever get proposed.

“The evidence is in my opinion not good. An example is the Bond 2001 ‘evidence’ that when examined critically seems to evaporate into artifacts, dating errors, and uncertainties, with little of the original certitude left.”

And yet, the IPCC still refers to it in its discussion of these issues. Go figure.

“As I understand the two non-Bond papers, no other mechanisms are suggested. The Ram and Stoltz paper, for example, is quite specific about that ( http://www.leif.org/EOS/1999GL900199.pdf ) “In summary, our work, and that of Svensmark and Friis-Christensen (1997), seems to show that changes in cloud cover due to solar influences affects terrestrial precipitation patterns and, as a result, the aridity of the Greenland dust source areas”. no invocation of ‘amplification’ or the like. You are presuming too much.”

I still don’t think that you understand what is meant by amplification so I’ll try and lay it out in the terms of the Ram and Stoltz paper. R&S makes comparisons of the dust profiles of glacier ice(a climate proxy) and compares them to various measures of solar activity. Because the changes in the *dust profiles* track the solar activity well but are of *much greater* relative magnitude than the mere TSI changes would cause there is said to be an amplification taking place. IOW, what R&S describe is an amplification *whether or not they call it that*. Again, this is 100% consistent with the IPCC’s usage of the word.

And, for the record, just because there are two mechanisms involving GCRs doesn’t mean that those two mechanisms [are the same].

Oops, again. The “proposed linkages” I mention above is actually from The Terrestrial Cosmic Ray Flux: Its Importance for Climate” published by those authors in 2009. I was reviewing both papers as I was typing my response and got them a bit mixed up.

“You are running up against folks like lgl and Rawls who preach that there are enormous lags and thermal inertia involved, so no way can the ‘sun begin to cool’ the Earth yet [as some commenters put it].”

As a former viking you should know that we sometimes have these pesky highs over Russia bringing cooold air from Siberia to Europe, there’s one right now b t w. Temps at mid lat NH are controlled by the Arctic Oscillation so warm globe and cold NH winters is no contradiction.

And yes, the thermal inertia is enormous but not infinite. And the lag is not fixed, the globe will warm almost until the solar activity gets below a long-term average, which is about now.

Leif, I read the paper you linked to above and most of the papers it references.

From the conclusions,

Although some positive evidence exists in ground-based studies, these are all from highly localized data and are suggested
to operate via global electric circuit based mechanisms: the
effects of which may depend on numerous factors and vary
greatly from one location to the next. Consequently, it is unclear
what the overall implications of these localized ﬁndings are. By
virtue of a lack of strong evidence detected from the numerous
satellite- and ground-based studies, it is clear that if a solarcloud link exists the effects are likely to be low amplitude
and could not have contributed appreciably to recent anthropogenic climate changes.

Anyway, the Harrison, 2006 study is interesting. They found an approximate 19% decrease in cloudiness after a FDE. The largest effect was at Cambridge (UK). I’d previously thought that if we were to detect GCR effects anywhere it would be in the frequency and persistence of radiation fog, a phenomena that is completely absent in many places but is frequent in others. It happens I grew up not far from Cambridge and radiation fogs were frequent between the autumn and spring equinox.

I don’t know how significant GCRs are to the Earth’s climate energy balance. I suspect not much, but I’ll argue that they are to minimum temperatures, and thus the min/max derived surface temperature.

My hypothesis is; GCR decreases during an FDE result in decreased cloud cover (including fog, which is just low level stratus) late in the night before dawn and thus decreased temperatures shortly before dawn, and the reduced clouds persist after dawn resulting in increased temperatures shortly after dawn, including increasing the minimum temperature, but only between the autumn and spring solstice.

John West says:
December 23, 2012 at 12:50 amLet’s say we have two bodies with exactly the same emissivity but different heat capacities.
We do not have two bodies. The Earth is the same body before and after the change of solar radiation.

Shawnhet says:
December 23, 2012 at 1:01 amObviously, this would cause us to miss potentially valid hypotheses.
To say that something is ‘solar triggered’ is not a valid hypothesis, whose details can be evaluated. And the IPCC correctly does not consider something like that.

Seriously, though, without an open mind, no truly original hypothesis would ever get proposed.
The open mind is not a property of the proposer, but of the accepter. Progress is often forced upon us by the data and has nothing to do with openmindedness.

R&S makes comparisons of the dust profiles of glacier ice(a climate proxy) and compares them to various measures of solar activity.
No, they don’t. They go straight to the GCR hypothesis, based on the 22-yr cycle [alternating flat and peaked GCR records].

And, for the record, just because there are two mechanisms involving GCRs doesn’t mean that those two mechanisms [are the same].
????
Perhaps you were trying to say something different. A different mechanism cannot be said to be an amplification of another mechanism. Perhaps that is the fundamental distinction you miss.

pkatt says:
December 23, 2012 at 1:31 amSeem to be saying different.
Nonsense

And besides visible things like sunspot counts.. who exactly was measuring the energy from solar activity here on earth 100 yrs ago.. 200 yrs ago.. 300 yrs ago. You really make me crazy.
Solar UV creates the ionosphere resulting in electric currents being generates 100 km up. These currents result in a magnetic field which can be observed at the surface. This was discovered by George Graham in 1722 and has been kept track off ever since, see: http://www.leif.org/research/H02-FRI-O1430-0550.pdf

lgl says:
December 23, 2012 at 1:48 amthe globe will warm almost until the solar activity gets below a long-term average
No, the globe will always warm as long as the Sun shines at all.

svalgaard
but you would be surprised at the cooling that has taken place after 1985 especially during the winters.
You are running up against folks like lgl and Rawls who preach that there are enormous lags and thermal inertia involved, so no way can the ‘sun begin to cool’ the Earth yet [as some commenters put it].

Playing one blogger against another Lief wastes everyone’s time. Nowhere in my post is a statement that the “sun begins to cool” the Earth nor have I even implied it .I can now see why the various bloggers on this track are so frustrated by your twisted comments. If you have problem with IGL or Rawls comments, then blog to them, not to me and answer other bloggers comments on their own merits .For a science person you seem to have very twisted sense of logic .

Philip Bradley says:
December 23, 2012 at 3:15 amI don’t know how significant GCRs are to the Earth’s climate energy balance.
The energy flux is about three times that of the light we get from the stars.

Shawnhet says:
December 23, 2012 at 1:01 amObviously, this would cause us to miss potentially valid hypotheses.
As you have great difficulty with this, let me try one last time:
Let us assume that TSI gives us a 0.1 degree solar cycle effect. Let us assume for the sake of the argument that the solar wind interaction with the earth produces Joule heating of the atmosphere of 1 degree variation over the cycle, then it is incorrect to claim that the solar wind amplifies the effect of TSI. The solar wind acts in addition to TSI. The two effects have nothing to do with each other, and one is not an amplification of the other.

Philip Bradley says:
December 23, 2012 at 3:15 amAnyway, the Harrison, 2006 study is interesting. They found an approximate 19% decrease in cloudiness after a FDE. The largest effect was at Cambridge (UK).

lsvalgaard says:We do not have two bodies. The Earth is the same body before and after the change of solar radiation.

True that, but it’s hardly homogenous or static. But that’s not really the overall point I’m making. There seems to be the overriding belief that: Energy in = Energy out therefore we can determine the Earth’s ideal temperature from incoming radiation. This is simply not true, if it were then how’d all that energy in fossil fuels get buried in the first place? Actually, Energy out = Energy in – Work accomplished. How much work is accomplished? I have no idea what the magnitude or even the scale or how to estimate it, but it wouldn’t bowl me over if it were 0.5, 0.05, 0.005 or even 0.0005 W/m2. From splitting O2 molecules in the upper atmosphere to every photosynthetic reaction to the thermal expansion of every sunlit surface on earth, etc. the sun light coming in has a lot of work to do.

lsvalgaard says:No, the globe will always warm as long as the Sun shines at all.

So, if the sun dropped to half output the Earth would heat up even more than it is now? LOL, no, the globe will always warm as long as the Sun shines at all relative to absolute zero but not relative to any particular or current temperature.

Lefi:”To say that something is ‘solar triggered’ is not a valid hypothesis, whose details can be evaluated.”

Sure it is. In fact, you claim to have shown Bond 2001 was inaccurate without any recourse to its proposed mechanisms at all. QED.

“The open mind is not a property of the proposer, but of the accepter. Progress is often forced upon us by the data and has nothing to do with openmindedness.”

It’s a property of both. Einstein’s theory of relativity was not forced upon us by the data, the data was there for some time and then he thought it up (because, in part, he was openminded).

“R&S makes comparisons of the dust profiles of glacier ice(a climate proxy) and compares them to various measures of solar activity.
No, they don’t. They go straight to the GCR hypothesis, based on the 22-yr cycle [alternating flat and peaked GCR records].”

Sorry my mistake here, I got this point confused with their later paper again. Regardless, I am not aware of any persistent ~22 year cycle that could possibly be causing changes in the climate.

“And, for the record, just because there are two mechanisms involving GCRs doesn’t mean that those two mechanisms [are the same].????

Perhaps you were trying to say something different. A different mechanism cannot be said to be an amplification of another mechanism. Perhaps that is the fundamental distinction you miss.”

No, it is you who is missing the fundamental point at issue which is it is the *overall effect of the sun that is amplified* not a particular mechanism. SInce the sun causes many different things to happen in many different ways, it is possible that there is more than *one* mechanism that has influence on the climate but it also driven by solar effects, as such the effect of the sun would be amplified as compared to if only a single mechanism affected the climate. Re-read the blurb from the IPCC on the top of this thread, it could not be more clear.

“Let us assume that TSI gives us a 0.1 degree solar cycle effect. Let us assume for the sake of the argument that the solar wind interaction with the earth produces Joule heating of the atmosphere of 1 degree variation over the cycle, then it is incorrect to claim that the solar wind amplifies the effect of TSI. The solar wind acts in addition to TSI. The two effects have nothing to do with each other, and one is not an amplification of the other.”

We already dealt with this exact point higher up this thread. No one is claiming that the TSI itself is amplified, what is being claimed/implied is that *solar* effects are amplified. Really, re-read the IPCC quote. This is not an arcane point and it is the core of all the issues here.

Shawnhet says:
December 23, 2012 at 7:39 amSure it is. In fact, you claim to have shown Bond 2001 was inaccurate without any recourse to its proposed mechanisms at all.
Nonsense, the interpretation of the data didn’t hold up, not the mechanism [as no mechanism was even mentioned].

because, in part, he was openminded
I don’t think Einstein was all that openminded [apart from the fact that you don’t really know]. He strenuously opposed Quantum Mechanics to the end, for example. I have myself made some scientific discoveries [and know personally many people who also have]. In no case was openmindedness a factor. You struggle against the discovery until you can’t ignore it any longer [either because the data or the logic become overwhelming].

Regardless, I am not aware of any persistent ~22 year cycle that could possibly be causing changes in the climate.
R&S describe in their paper such a mechanism and why they think that there is a GCR-cloud link [and no amplification of anything].

it is possible that there is more than *one* mechanism that has influence on the climate but it also driven by solar effects, as such the effect of the sun would be amplified as compared to if only a single mechanism affected the climate.
This is the critical point where you go wrong. Many papers that claim ‘amplification’ [e.g. Bond’s] speak about ‘feedback’ as well. That would be an amplification of one process, another [different] mechanism is not an amplification of the first.

No one is claiming that the TSI itself is amplified
And nobody is saying that, so your response is not relevant.

Really, re-read the IPCC quote. This is not an arcane point and it is the core of all the issues here.
The IPCC is very clear and correct on this: they refuse to discuss unspecified and unknown mechanisms. That is the take-home message that you miss. The core of the issue is whether this section is a ‘game-changer’, and it should be clear that such thoughts are just wishful thinking.

Leif Svalgaard says: December 23, 2012 at 9:32 am
In no case was openmindedness a factor. You struggle against the discovery until you can’t ignore it any longer [either because the data or the logic become overwhelming].
===============================
I know that this is true. It involves insight, but the cautious scientist guards against his fallibilities.

Leif Svalgaard says:
December 23, 2012 at 9:32 am
“The IPCC is very clear and correct on this: they refuse to discuss unspecified and unknown mechanisms.”

Gary Pearse says:
December 21, 2012 at 3:32 pm
You know, I have mentioned the Wilson Cloud chamber and the streaks of cloud created in it by GCRs, and a variety of atomic particles passing though it on about 3 or 4 occasions on WUWT without seeming to elicit any interest in this fact. Charles T. R. Wilson, Scottish physicist invented it and received the Nobel Prize in 1927. Ten years later, Carl Anderson, US physicist received the Nobel Prize for discovering that GCRs contained positrons and muons using the cloud chamber. Donald Glaser won the NP for his improvement, the bubble chamber.

After 3 nobel prizes for cloud formation by subatomic particles, surely we can lay to rest the question as to whether the mechanism is specified and known!! Lets concentrate on how large or small the effect is. It is definitely there.

Leif:”Nonsense, the interpretation of the data didn’t hold up, not the mechanism [as no mechanism was even mentioned].”

That’s *exactly* my point. You were able to evaluate the hypothesis by looking at data without even mentioning the mechansim.

“I don’t think Einstein was all that openminded [apart from the fact that you don’t really know]. He strenuously opposed Quantum Mechanics to the end, for example. I have myself made some scientific discoveries [and know personally many people who also have]. In no case was openmindedness a factor. You struggle against the discovery until you can’t ignore it any longer [either because the data or the logic become overwhelming].”

Well, Einstein was more open minded that Lord Kelvin who looked at the same data and proclaimed :””There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now, All that remains is more and more precise measurement.” Kelvin was perfectly happy ignoring all the evidence that led Einstein to relativity and Einstein would never have thought of relativity if he had ignored what Kelvin did.

“Really, re-read the IPCC quote. This is not an arcane point and it is the core of all the issues here.
The IPCC is very clear and correct on this: they refuse to discuss unspecified and unknown mechanisms. That is the take-home message that you miss. The core of the issue is whether this section is a ‘game-changer’, and it should be clear that such thoughts are just wishful thinking.”

Well, it is clear that you did not re-read the IPCC quote as the above has nothing to do with what we were talking about. Here is relevant section of the IPCC quote: “… implying the existence of an amplifying mechanism such as the hypothesized GCR-cloud link.” Clearly, per this, the GCR cloud link would be an example of an amplifying mechanism. When you argue the opposite, you are either wrong or talking about something other than what the IPCC is talking about. In either case, it does not change what the IPCC wrote in *plain English*. You can continue to make assertions about what is or is not an amplifying mechanisms but they are meaningless until you directly address the IPCC quote which is what this thread is about. Refer to the quote specifically, so I can be sure that we are talking about the same things.

Dr. S tried every trick in the book to convince him that his ‘so called discovery’ is ‘rubbish’, but he will not have any of it. One way to deal with people like that is to use every opportunity to tell them they don’t know what they are talking about, until eventually science proves them right.

Shawnhet says:
December 23, 2012 at 10:15 amRefer to the quote specifically, so I can be sure that we are talking about the same things.
I have done that repeatedly, but you refuse to acknowledge that. IPCC is correct in refusing to discuss unknown mechanisms, but is incorrect in claiming that there always is an ‘amplifier’ [e.g. R&S don’t need or claim any]. The grossest error is Rawls’ claim that the sentence is a game-changer.

vukcevic says:
December 23, 2012 at 10:43 amTake for examples Vukcevic, he thinks he has discovered something.
Thousands of pseudo-scientists think so, but very few get even close.

Leif:”I have done that repeatedly, but you refuse to acknowledge that. IPCC is correct in refusing to discuss unknown mechanisms, but is incorrect in claiming that there always is an ‘amplifier’ [e.g. R&S don’t need or claim any].”

In my defence, I think if you review this thread you will see that you have never mentioned the IPCC being incorrect before. I still fail to see what the point is as regardless of whether you call it an amplification or an addition there is still a much larger solar footprint in climate proxies than make sense if you only consider TSI alone.

Leif Svalgaard says:”The IPCC is very clear and correct on this: they refuse to discuss unspecified and unknown mechanisms.”

I couldn’t disagree more. The IPCC is publishing so-called assessment reports. A proper assessment objectively evaluates the known and the unknown, but the IPCC has chosen to advocate a hypothesis instead.

Besides that, the UV effect on “radiative forcing” is known. The magnitude of climate sensitivity to UV variation is what’s unknown and ignored. That’s exactly the kind of thing the IPCC should be discussing.

pochas says:
December 23, 2012 at 11:31 amWell, if its not CO2 and its not TSI
some people think it is CO2 and some people think it is TSI then we have what Rumsfeld would term “known unknowns.” You are completely uninterested in these?
If it has been firmly demonstrated that a known unknown is causing climate change, then, of course, I would be interested, but such has not been demonstrated to my satisfaction.

Shawnhet says:
December 23, 2012 at 12:28 pmI still fail to see what the point is
Indeed, that much is evident.there is still a much larger solar footprint in climate proxies than make sense if you only consider TSI alone.
Some people would disagree with you, e.g. Shapiro et al. and Soon [ http://www.leif.org/research/Temp-Track-Sun-Not.png ] and as I have said the foorprint has not been convincing to me [other people have lower bar, and will believe anything – the open mind syndrome].

John West says:
December 23, 2012 at 12:44 pmA proper assessment objectively evaluates the known and the unknown
It is hard to objectively evaluate the unknown [or perhaps you don’t thunk so]

Oh dear, what’s a poor old ex-clown to do? I thought Dr. Svalgaard to be a respectable scientist, but his postings in this thread sound alarmingly smug to me. They remind me of Gordon Cook’s complaint in the ClimateGate emails about Ray Bradley’s air of ‘papal infallibility.’ It’s as if he considers his every remark to be apodictic. He comes across as supercilious and condescending.

Now, I’m not saying he’s the only one here who behaves so, but one does hope that an educated, responsible person can set a good example for others. Again, I’m only an old, broken-down ex-clown and I have no great thoughts to share with the assembled readers, but I do believe that people should consider their words carefully because that tone, that public face, is how you are perceived and evaluated. At least by me. And snippy, snarky comments should be infra dig, don’t you think?

Crusty the ex-Clown says:
December 23, 2012 at 2:55 pmOh dear, what’s a poor old ex-clown to do? I thought Dr. Svalgaard to be a respectable scientist
Disagreeing with any anti-IPCC crowd [as found here] automatically strips one of ‘respectability’. But, please go ahead and believe that that one sentence which is the topic here is a ‘game-changer’. I, at least, have the courage to say ‘No’.

Leif:”there is still a much larger solar footprint in climate proxies than make sense if you only consider TSI alone.
Some people would disagree with you, e.g. Shapiro et al. and Soon [ http://www.leif.org/research/Temp-Track-Sun-Not.png ] and as I have said the foorprint has not been convincing to me [other people have lower bar, and will believe anything – the open mind syndrome].”

This would be a lot more convincing if it was on point. Unfortunately, since no one thinks the relationship btw the temp and the solar proxies over the period of the graph you post would be the same as it has been in the past (have you heard of CO2?), you are simply attacking a straw man syndrome.

Here is an example of the closed mind syndrome: When presented with very good evidence of a relationship of a larger solar footprint (such as any one of the papers the IPCC lists) he claims that the experts in the field (the IPCC) are mistaken, then posts an irrelevant graph about periods where other relationships come into play. Whew, that was a close one! Our close-minder almost had to have an original thought ;)

Shawnhet says:
December 23, 2012 at 4:01 pmHere is an example of the closed mind syndrome: When presented with very good evidence of a relationship of a larger solar footprint (such as any one of the papers the IPCC lists) … Our close-minder almost had to have an original thought
none of those are ‘very good evidence’. Sadly, your comments are now beginning to veer from attacking the opinions to attacking the person. I’ll not follow you there.

Not true. From Dengel 2009:”The probability of such a good relationship between the annual growth anomaly and galactic cosmic ray ﬂux occurring by chance alone is 0.008 (n = 45, r = 0.39) (see the inset of Fig. 3). Of all the variables investigated, it is by far the one most correlated with the annual growth anomaly”

“Sadly, your comments are now beginning to veer from attacking the opinions to attacking the person. I’ll not follow you there.”

Well, I got tired of you making all sorts of claims about what I believe or that I have an open-minded syndrome).so I thought I would give you some of your own medicine. For the record, I don’t like it either.

Sadly, you claim that you are led everywhere by the evidence but it looks to me that you simply ignore evidence that doesn’t meet your preconceptions. However, I am open-minded enough to ask you for instance: SInce you are so sure that the Dengel paper is not good evidence, what specifically is the problem with the paper. Please be specific.

Shawnhet says:
December 23, 2012 at 4:43 pmSInce you are so sure that the Dengel paper is not good evidence, what specifically is the problem with the paper.
For one, the correlation coefficient claimed is only 0.39, meaning that only 15% of the variation is ‘explained’ by the correlation. This is normally not considered ‘good evidence’ and surely not of a major driver [could be indicative of a minor contribution of which there probably are many, e.g. the 0.1 degrees variation caused by cycle variation of TSI].
One of the things that convinces me that the Sun is not a major driver is the lack of any correlation between climate and the variation of geomagnetic activity since the 1840s. We have good geomagnetic data going back that far and many researchers agree that the Ap-index [which can be constructed back to 1844] is a sensitive measure of the sun’s magnetic field and the solar wind speed in the heliosphere. The index touches ‘both ends’ of the stick, so to speak: the sun’s magnetic field that controls TSI, UV, flares, CMEs, and Forbush Decreases, and in combination with the solar wind speed controls the modulation and level of galactic cosmic rays reaching the Earth. Here is the variation of the Ap-index: http://www.leif.org/research/Ap-1844-now.png
As you can see, there is no trend whatsoever, while over the same period global temperatures are believed to have risen about 1 degree.

“SInce you are so sure that the Dengel paper is not good evidence, what specifically is the problem with the paper.
For one, the correlation coefficient claimed is only 0.39, meaning that only 15% of the variation is ‘explained’ by the correlation. This is normally not considered ‘good evidence’ and surely not of a major driver [could be indicative of a minor contribution of which there probably are many, e.g. the 0.1 degrees variation caused by cycle variation of TSI].”

??? You are claiming that because the effect of the solar link is relatively small, it does not matter what the quality of the evidence supporting it is? You do agree that it is possible to have good evidence of a factor that could increase or decrease the growth of trees by 15%, right? You seem to think that because the solar link cannot increase the growth of trees by over 50% there will never be good evidence for it.

In re: whether the TSI caused .1 degrees variation in temps can cause the relationship observed, I believe that you have already answered your own question. If a 0.1% variation in X can cause a 15% variation in Y, that would require something in addition to X acting in tandem with Y.

Shawnhet says:
December 23, 2012 at 6:30 pmYou are claiming that because the effect of the solar link is relatively small, it does not matter what the quality of the evidence supporting it is?
Essentially, yes. There is good evidence [and theoretical justification] that TSI would cause a 0.1 degree variation, but that does not make TSI a major driver. You misinterpret the 15%. Are you saying that the trees are 15% higher in perfect coincidence with cosmic rays, or have 15% more wood or something similar? I don’t have the paper handy, so can only go by the title ” A relationship between galactic cosmic radiation and tree rings”. Are the rings 15% wider?
Now, you are ignoring my reason for believing the Sun is not a major driver. If it is just a minor driver [on the 0.1-0.2 degree level, we don’t need to worry about it in the first place, and IPCC shouldn’t either, because that is not a significant change of climate]

Shawnhet says:
December 22, 2012 at 1:07 pmIn re: the paper you link above, I thought you might be interested in the most recent work done by its author which still seems consistent with the solar amplification model. (I don’t have access to the paper)
Hiroko was sweet enough to send it to me: http://www.leif.org/EOS/Obrochta2012.pdf

Shawnhet says:
December 22, 2012 at 1:07 pm(I don’t have access to the paper)
Hiroko was sweet enough to send it to me:
And the paper effectively demolishes the Bond 2001 suppositions used by IPCC. One down, two to go :-)

Leif, it appears that we have a very large difference in how we interpret the results of statistical tests. I don’t think one can claim that any relationship with a correlation coefficient of 0.39 cannot have good evidence supporting it. If you had six factors each with an r of 0.39, you could theoretically explain all the variation in a population in terms of those factors. Ultimately, the significance of the result is what shows that you have good evidence of a relationship and the correlation shows the strength of that relationship. As such, for the Dengel 2009 paper, there is good evidence of a relatively weak relationship(in statistical terms). Even though Dengel’s relationship is weak in statistical terms, is still much stronger than can be accounted for solely by the direct effect of TSI. Since 15% of the variation in tree ring size appears to be related to a solar proxy, and TSI only varies by 0.1-2%, something else must be operating.

You will pardon me for not blindly believing everything you say or write. Your staunch beliefs do not explain in any way the current lull in sun activity.. that alone tells me you have no clue. You criticize other studies for having to correct their data and then have the audacity to point us to a chart you yourself did the same thing to. Lower this after x yr.. raise that before x yr.. What on earth makes yours accurate and everyone else’s rubbish. It is closed minded thinking like that that keeps science from advancing until the OLD GUARD retires.

One should pay attention to Dr. Svalgaard’s opinion, but not necessarily agree with it.
Data shows:
Spectral response for S. Hemisphere temperature and the Sun Spot magnetic cycle is virtually identical.
Spectral analysis shows that the Sun Spot magnetic cycle, Aa index, the Earth’s magnetic field and temperature oscillations (ENSO and Antartics’s circumpolar wave) are not just coincidence or product of someone’s imagination

lsvalgaard said:
“One of the things that convinces me that the Sun is not a major driver is the lack of any correlation between climate and the variation of geomagnetic activity since the 1840s. We have good geomagnetic data going back that far and many researchers agree that the Ap-index [which can be constructed back to 1844] is a sensitive measure of the sun’s magnetic field and the solar wind speed in the heliosphere. The index touches ‘both ends’ of the stick, so to speak: the sun’s magnetic field that controls TSI, UV, flares, CMEs, and Forbush Decreases, and in combination with the solar wind speed controls the modulation and level of galactic cosmic rays reaching the Earth. Here is the variation of the Ap-index: http://www.leif.org/research/Ap-1844-now.png
As you can see, there is no trend whatsoever, while over the same period global temperatures are believed to have risen about 1 degree.”

There are upward trends from ~1900 to 1960, and from ~1965 to 2005, and the rises in the 20th century were not preceded by such colder conditions as the rises in solar activity after Maunder and Dalton. And if we look at temperatures in England from say 1730 to 1930:

there is no warming trend, so any temp’ rise over the whole period is in the last ~80yrs.
What convinces me most though is the monthly-yearly detail of correlation between the Ap index and land temperature anomalies, only a fool would deny the link between a low Ap index and episodes of colder temperatures.

Shawnhet says:
December 23, 2012 at 10:26 pmSince 15% of the variation in tree ring size appears to be related to a solar proxy, and TSI only varies by 0.1-2%, something else must be operating.
No, because things usually don’t behave in such a linear way. Most chemical reactions take place at twice the speed if the temperature is increased by 10 degrees, so that is 100% for a 3% increase in the driver. The fusion that powers the Sun increases 25% for a 1% increase in temperature. And so on.
But you still ignore the graph that shows why I don’t think the Sun is a major driver of climate.

pkatt says:
December 24, 2012 at 12:52 amthen have the audacity to point us to a chart you yourself did the same thing to. Lower this after x yr.. raise that before x yr..
That’s right.

vukcevic says:
December 24, 2012 at 1:23 amSun –Earth link in the Antarctic is undeniable
Herewith denied, as there are no data at all from Antarctica before 1957, so spectral analysis is spurious.

Ulric Lyons says:
December 24, 2012 at 6:07 am
lsvalgaard said:
“Here is the variation of the Ap-index: http://www.leif.org/research/Ap-1844-now.png
As you can see, there is no trend whatsoever, while over the same period global temperatures are believed to have risen about 1 degree.”

Dr. S’s skills in cherry picking the data has to be acknowledged.
As I said on many occasions it is strong geomagnetic storms that matter, they induce strong electric currents in ocean and magma alike.
Here is the alternative data from the British Geological Survey (BGS) that matters

not the trend less Ap index
However if you whish to look at flat events with Ap index above 45 degrees North here is one

lsvalgaard says:
December 24, 2012 at 7:32 am
vukcevic: Sun –Earth link in the Antarctic is undeniable
Svalgaard: Herewith denied, as there are no data at all from Antarctica before 1957, so spectral analysis is spurious.

Sometime you do resort to dubious arguments; you are (and many others) happy to quote 10Be Dome Fuji ice core data (see one but last illustration in link at the end of this post) going back for thousands of years, but not knowing what magnetic field in Antarctic was at any point in time.
Ah yes, you will say that is the Earth dipole strength
And I say precisely what I am showing, the South end of that dipole is just of the South pole (blue line) last illustration in

vukcevic says:
December 24, 2012 at 8:43 amAs I said on many occasions it is strong geomagnetic storms that matter, they induce strong electric currents in ocean and magma alike.
No, they induce weak and short-lived currents, and concentrating on the strong storms [Dst < -200 nT] there is no trend either: http://www.leif.org/research/Dst-Positive-Negative-1905-now.png

not knowing what magnetic field in Antarctic was at any point in time.
Nobody knows what the magnetic field in the Antarctic was before 1957.

Leif:”Shawnhet says:
December 23, 2012 at 10:26 pm
Since 15% of the variation in tree ring size appears to be related to a solar proxy, and TSI only varies by 0.1-2%, something else must be operating.
No, because things usually don’t behave in such a linear way. Most chemical reactions take place at twice the speed if the temperature is increased by 10 degrees, so that is 100% for a 3% increase in the driver. The fusion that powers the Sun increases 25% for a 1% increase in temperature. And so on.
But you still ignore the graph that shows why I don’t think the Sun is a major driver of climate.”

I agree that non-linear effects could act to increase the effect of solar inputs on the growth of trees, however, since I can only think of one class of *chemical* reaction that could do so – namely the phase change of water. Do you have another in mind? As it happens, I believe that this is almost certainly the means by which solar effects are magnified beyond what we would expect from TSI alone (assuming we do discover that it is so magnified).

It is not that I am ignoring your graph, I just wanted to be sure that we agreed on the basic statistical issues. Assuming that we do, I would say that your bare graph does not really address the issue. It is possible for the sun to not be *the* major driver of climate or whatever and also for it to be a bigger driver of climate than we would expect by considering TSI alone. The latter is the issue of this thread.

In that vein, I will propose what I would consider an actual test of the contention raised by this thread. Take your graph and publish the r value and its significance for the temperature and the TSI, as well as those values comparing the temp to another more variable solar measure (like the UV or CRF). If the r values and significance stay ~ equal for the TSI as for the CRF say, then you might well be justified in claiming that there is no magnification of the solar effect.

OTOH, if as with Dengel, the correlation of the more variable solar measures is better than with TSI, the evidence will probably suggest such a magnification is a (strong) possibility.

It is hard to evaluate the unknown; the first step is being realistic about what you think you know. This is very difficult for people who have huge egos.

”That has been modelled and found to be tiny [perhaps you disagree]: “Out-of-phase forcing leads to ~0.05K increase in surface temperature, about half as large as in-phase forcing.”

Thanks for the link, there’s some decent data there but hardly anything that conclusively establishes a tiny climate sensitivity to UV variation, quite the opposite in fact. The trend in UV to temperature is obvious to anyone who hasn’t already decided its CO2 can see it.

”And, besides, UV has not had any long-term trend since 1722, so it is difficult to ascribe ‘Global Warming’ to changes in UV.”

You keep saying that as if it has some meaning. We’re talking about cycles over time spans of 1100 years or more. To scale it’s like we’re at 5:00 PM and you’re saying insolation has no trend since 7:00 AM therefore couldn’t have caused the warming. Just in case you don’t know insolation begins to rise at sunrise, steadily climbs peaking at noon and steadily decreases to sunset every day (cloud disruptions notwithstanding), therefore 7:00 AM and 5:00 PM would have the same value and technically “no trend” (similar “trick” you’re using). The daily peak in temperature however doesn’t occur until 4:00 or 5:00 PM. There are, of course, other influences to the daily temperature track than just insolation, like cloud cover, but none of these are the cause of the diurnal cycle, yes, it’s the Sun.

John West says:
December 24, 2012 at 9:08 amYou keep saying that as if it has some meaning. We’re talking about cycles over time spans of 1100 years or more.
The interest is not about 1000-yr cycles, but with what will happen in the next few decades.

@ lsvalgaard
Imagine if you graphed insolation for a location in temperate NH on an hourly interval from about January to about August. Wouldn’t it look a lot like the sunspot record with little insulation during winter corresponding to the grand minimum of the 1600’s then steadily increasing peaks until about June and then steadily decreasing peaks?

So in August you say ‘no trend since April’ so it can’t have anything to do with insolation.

John West says:
December 24, 2012 at 9:33 amSo in August you say ‘no trend since April’ so it can’t have anything to do with insolation.
LOL, that’s how silly your “no trend since 1722” argument looks to me.
With that kind of silliness that you display, I guess that anything looks silly.
Now get this: climate is about trends over decades or even centuries.

Dr. Svalgaard:Nobody knows what the magnetic field in the Antarctic was before 1957.

But we know exactly what the sun’s magnetic field was in 1700, and it was same as in 1800 and 1900 and 2000, and since we know what the Earth’s composite temperature was (except of course Antarctic before 1957) in 1700 and 1800 and 1900 and 2000 and ‘the sun has nothing to do with it’. Right?

Leif, Thank you for the Obrochta et al. paper. However, I don’t think it causes any problems whatsoever for the Bond 2001 paper except for Bond’s belief in the so-called 1500-year cycle.

From the paper’s conclusions:”Taking into account this uncertainty, the variability in HSG over the millennial frequency band is most consistent with dual 1000 and 2000-year forcing, **similar to the variability in inferred solar proxies**.” My emphasis.

IOW, the paper finds that even though they can find no evidence of a 1500 year cycle, they still find the variability in HSG to be similar to the variability in solar proxies (which is the relevant part of Bond 2001 to this discussion).

expect from TSI alone (assuming we do discover that it is so magnified
Dengel and Co, does not consider TSI..

It is not that I am ignoring your graph, I just wanted to be sure that we agreed on the basic statistical issues. Assuming that we d
We do not, as the r-values say nothing about how large the amplitudes are. Be specific now, does the Dengel paper actually say that tree rings are 15% wider?

for it to be a bigger driver of climate than we would expect by considering TSI alone. The latter is the issue of this thread.
The graph includes all the variables [besides TSI] people have brought up on this issue.

If the r values and significance stay ~ equal for the TSI as for the CRF say, then you might well be justified in claiming that there is no magnification of the solar effect.
People have done that many times and the results are well published. And TSI alone is not the issue. All the other variables contribute to the Ap-graph. The solar magnetic field as given by the sunspot number varies thousands of percent. But here are some r-values for yearly Ap against some other variables for the time since 1978 where we actually have good data:
CRF TSI Temp
0.79 0.58 -0.47 [But with opposite sign: i.e. temps go up when solar activity goes down]
For other periods the results are similar, but then you can begin to quibble about data not being reliable.

vukcevic says:
December 24, 2012 at 9:45 am
Dr. Svalgaard:But we know exactly what the sun’s magnetic field was in 1700, and it was same as in 1800 and 1900 and 2000, and since we know what the Earth’s composite temperature was (except of course Antarctic before 1957) in 1700 and 1800 and 1900 and 2000 and ‘the sun has nothing to do with it’. Right?
It has taken you a looong time to finally admit this.

Shawnhet says:
December 24, 2012 at 9:46 amIOW, the paper finds that even though they can find no evidence of a 1500 year cycle, they still find the variability in HSG to be similar to the variability in solar proxies (which is the relevant part of Bond 2001 to this discussion).
Apart from the fact that the 1000-2000 yr ‘cycles’ are VERY poorly known in other solar proxies and not at all relevant to IPCC’s mandate to investigate climate change on decadal and century-scale times. We do not base policy of putative 2000-yr cycles.

“Indeed this implies that more than 50% the 10Be flux increase around, e.g., 1700 A.D., 1810 A.D. and 1895 A.D. is due to non-production related increases!” and “When the first detailed 10Be measurements from polar ice cores were reported (e.g., Beer, et al., 1990) there was the hope that this ice core data could provide a “monitor” of past solar activity as it effects cosmic ray intensities incident on the Earth, in much the same way as neutron monitors are used to monitor this solar activity in the modern era (Beer, 2000). This “concept” with its 1:1 correspondence between 10Be production and 10Be in ice cores, has since been used extensively to interpret historical 10Be ice core data in terms of changes in heliospheric conditions and their effect on cosmic ray intensities incident on the Earth. Our results show that, given our current understanding (or lack of it) of the correspondence between 10Be production, sunspot numbers and the 10Be observed in ice cores, this is really not a reliable “concept” to use for historical extrapolation. The sunspot number itself remains the best indicator of cyclic (11 year) solar activity after ~1700 A.D.”

Yes, I know that temperature can affect chemical reactions – what I don’t understand is what other sorts of chemical reactions besides WV could be affected by solar effects.

“expect from TSI alone (assuming we do discover that it is so magnified
Dengel and Co, does not consider TSI..”

Sure they do. From the paper: “Most variables were only weakly correlated with the annual growth anomaly: total solar radiation was never statistically signiﬁcantly correlated with the growth anomaly but diffuse radiation was signiﬁcantly correlated in some months (Fig. 2).”

“We do not, as the r-values say nothing about how large the amplitudes are. Be specific now, does the Dengel paper actually say that tree rings are 15% wider?”

No, the Dengel paper says that once we have the CRF data we can account for 15% of the variation in the tree ring data, which is much more than anything else they tested for including for instance the total solar radiation.

“The graph includes all the variables [besides TSI] people have brought up on this issue.”

I may’ve gotten confused as to what graph you are talking about. I was looking at the http://www.leif.org/research/Temp-Track-Sun-Not.png one which appears to only deal with TSI vs temperature. Regardless, if you want to address the issue of this thread you need to compare the correlation of TSI (plus CO2 and whatever if you wish) to temperature to the correlation of a more variable component of the solar effect and those same other factors and the temperature.

“Apart from the fact that the 1000-2000 yr ‘cycles’ are VERY poorly known in other solar proxies and not at all relevant to IPCC’s mandate to investigate climate change on decadal and century-scale times. We do not base policy of putative 2000-yr cycles.”

I thought the point was that Obrochta et al. “demolishes the Bond 2001 suppositions used by IPCC.” Are you now saying that Obrochta et al. is wrong? Remember the IPCC’s “supposition” is that Bond 2001 reports an empirical relationship btw cosmogenic isotope archives and aspects of the climate. Do you know agree that Obrochta says nothing about this except to agree with it somewhat(possibly they may be wrong as well).

Shawnhet says:
December 24, 2012 at 11:52 amwhat I don’t understand is what other sorts of chemical reactions besides WV could be affected by solar effects.
The issue was your assumption that a small change could not have a large effect.

“expect from TSI alone (assuming we do discover that it is so magnified
Dengel and Co, does not consider TSI..”
Sure they do.
No, they don’t. Goes to show how carefully everything has to be worded. They do not consider TSI to be significant nor GCR-clouds to be any amplification of TSI effects.

No, the Dengel paper says that once we have the CRF data we can account for 15% of the variation in the tree ring data, which is much more than anything else they tested for including for instance the total solar radiation.
So they just say that their data supports a very small variation, but it would be nice if you could give me a link to the paper.

I may’ve gotten confused as to what graph you are talking about.
Goes to show that you ignore what I show. I think I have posted the following several times:
“One of the things that convinces me that the Sun is not a major driver is the lack of any correlation between climate and the variation of geomagnetic activity since the 1840s. We have good geomagnetic data going back that far and many researchers agree that the Ap-index [which can be constructed back to 1844] is a sensitive measure of the sun’s magnetic field and the solar wind speed in the heliosphere. The index touches ‘both ends’ of the stick, so to speak: the sun’s magnetic field that controls TSI, UV, flares, CMEs, and Forbush Decreases, and in combination with the solar wind speed controls the modulation and level of galactic cosmic rays reaching the Earth. Here is the variation of the Ap-index: http://www.leif.org/research/Ap-1844-now.png
As you can see, there is no trend whatsoever, while over the same period global temperatures are believed to have risen about 1 degree.”

Are you now saying that Obrochta et al. is wrong?
What I’m saying is that they make the usual ‘knee-jerk’ assumption that ‘the other solar proxies’ are accurate. As I have posted:
Some of which may very well be climate related rather than solar related, e.g.

“When the first detailed 10Be measurements from polar ice cores were reported (e.g., Beer, et al., 1990) there was the hope that this ice core data could provide a “monitor” of past solar activity as it effects cosmic ray intensities incident on the Earth, in much the same way as neutron monitors are used to monitor this solar activity in the modern era (Beer, 2000). This “concept” with its 1:1 correspondence between 10Be production and 10Be in ice cores, has since been used extensively to interpret historical 10Be ice core data in terms of changes in heliospheric conditions and their effect on cosmic ray intensities incident on the Earth. Our results show that, given our current understanding (or lack of it) of the correspondence between 10Be production, sunspot numbers and the 10Be observed in ice cores, this is really not a reliable “concept” to use for historical extrapolation.”
Here is another one on that subject: http://www.leif.org/EOS/nikitin-2005.pdf

““expect from TSI alone (assuming we do discover that it is so magnified
Dengel and Co, does not consider TSI..”
Sure they do.
No, they don’t. Goes to show how carefully everything has to be worded. They do not consider TSI to be significant nor GCR-clouds to be any amplification of TSI effects.”

What are you talking about? They considered it and found it to be insignificant. Check the context of my original quote and your response to it.

“I may’ve gotten confused as to what graph you are talking about.
Goes to show that you ignore what I show. I think I have posted the following several times:”

Yes, I saw that post. However, what I was trying to do was construct a test that shows the nature of the relationship of the solar effects and the temperature. Saying that the temp rises by
~1C over that period doesn’t give you enough information to do that so I was looking at the the one that compare the TSI to temperature. I apologize for not making that clear but it was not that I was ignoring you.

“No, the Dengel paper says that once we have the CRF data we can account for 15% of the variation in the tree ring data, which is much more than anything else they tested for including for instance the total solar radiation.
So they just say that their data supports a very small variation, but it would be nice if you could give me a link to the paper.”

The CRF data can account for the a small portion of the variation but that portion is much larger than for everything else they test including the TSI. Here is a link to the paper:

Shawnhet, Svalgaard: Gentlemen, you are arguing as if you think the IPCC is seriously presenting something coherent and unadorned. Seeing AR5 before it is dressed up for release is the story. You can see by Haigh’s reaction to the passage you are disputing she is unwittingly showing us what will actually be in the report (she is an author this section). Nothing you are discussing will survive. The flood of caveats contained in the scientific section are pre designed as loopholes to not have to present the real science. Also, the caveats provide a basis for saying the models predicted whatever comes to pass. Note they even have one that predicts the forecasts for temperature will lie outside the predicted range if needed by stating that the predictions assume a big drop in aerosols – an illogical assumption given that China, India, Brazil, etc. have no intention of curbing fossil fuel energy use. Arguing what IPCC means in one measly paragraph is too unimportant for two highly qualified scientists such as yourselves and underscores the magnitude of the task of reclaiming science from the philistines.

Shawnhet says:
December 24, 2012 at 1:36 pmWhat are you talking about? They considered it and found it to be insignificant. Check the context of my original quote and your response to it.
There is no reference to TSI in their paper. The solar irradiance they talk about is that measured on the ground after all kinds of climate and weather influences.

Ok, so they are wrong too. Can we at least agree that they do not “demolish” Bond 2001?
If they are wrong too, then Bond 2001 becomes irrelevant.

what I was actually looking for was TSI vs Temps and CR vs Temps.
As everybody knows [and can easily verify] there are no significant correlations with temps:

let me wish you and yours a Merry Christmas!
Same

Gary Pearse says:
December 24, 2012 at 1:55 pmShawnhet, Svalgaard: Gentlemen, you are arguing as if you think the IPCC is seriously presenting something coherent and unadorned
Alec Rawls pretends that that ‘measly paragraph’ is a ‘game-changer’. I, for one, don’t really care what IPCC says or thinks, but simply object to AR5 being a game-changer in any real sense.

John West says:
December 24, 2012 at 5:18 pm“Now get this: climate is about trends over decades or even centuries.”
There’s exactly where we disagree. My position is that climate is about trends over millienia.
The IPCC is [rightfully] not concerned about thousands of years, as we cannot base public policy on 1000-yr trends. Of interest is only decadal and [at most] century-scale variations. Eventually we’ll have a new glaciation [perhaps 50,000 years from now, but we cannot do anything about that nor should we be concerned]

lsvalgaard says:”The IPCC is [rightfully] not concerned about thousands of years, as we cannot base public policy on 1000-yr trends. Of interest is only decadal and [at most] century-scale variations. Eventually we’ll have a new glaciation [perhaps 50,000 years from now, but we cannot do anything about that nor should we be concerned]

That’s got to be in the top ten most absurd things I’ve ever read. The IPCC should be concerned about thousands of years for understanding’s sake! How can we make good policy decisions on superficial understanding? You’re saying it’s OK for us to look through the proverbial hole in the fence and make policy decisions based on the appearance of a tree on the other side when in fact it’s an elephant.

We really should be concerned about the next glaciation as it really has the potential to put the hurt on civilization, unlike a little bit of warming. I really wish AGW were true, that way we’d at least have one method to help prevent the next glacial period.

John West says:
December 24, 2012 at 10:24 pmWe really should be concerned about the next glaciation as it really has the potential to put the hurt on civilization
After a public astronomy lecture a little old lady came up to the professor and asked in a quivering voice: “did you say that the Sun would swallow the Earth in five million years?” “No” answered the professor “I said five billion years”. “Thank God!” said the little old lady, “I was afraid you said five million years”.

“What convinces me most though is the monthly-yearly detail of correlation between the Ap index and land temperature anomalies, only a fool would deny the link between a low Ap index and episodes of colder temperatures.”

1. There is no significant correlation.
2. if there was, how would the AP index differentiate between effecting land temps at 2meters
and effecting ocean temps. That is, you cannot pick and choose climate metrics at your whim.
3. Again, case of the missing mechanism.

You can of course pick any random solar signal and manufacture a spurious correction with some selective climate parametee temperature the land, temperature of the sea, tropospheric temps,
CET, tree rings, lake levels, hurricanes, floods, the size of obama’s shoes.
It aint science. its numerology.

Better start understanding how the sun really works instead of going on about intricate micro details of a chaotic system you really never ever will understand enough to make any kind of reliable prediction.

Hi Steven
Scientists should also know what is going on underneath their feet as well as above their heads, but sadly there is lot of ignorance and disinterest. Earth’s Magnetic Field spectrum as calculated from the Jackson-Bloxham geo-magnetic data, contains most of the decadal components found in the climate’s natural variability, and more.

vukcevic says:
December 26, 2012 at 1:46 amEarth’s Magnetic Field spectrum as calculated from the Jackson-Bloxham geo-magnetic data, contains most of the decadal components found in the climate’s natural variability, and more.
That data cannot be used in the Arctic and Antarctic [as you do], because there is no real data from there, explaining the “disinterest”

Doc
you can’t help yourself getting it wrong: it is not Arctic or Antarctic, as you already know, unless you whish to suppress the new knowledge, in order to give more time to the fast evaporating fizz out of the CO2 ‘catastrophic beverage’ hypothesis, but of course you wouldn’t do such a thing,.

Let me put you right once again:
It is the Earth’s magnetic field
It is its rate of change
It is at the core-mantle interface
It is computed at 2.5 year intervals
It is from the data by Bloxham & Jackson .

vukcevic says:
December 26, 2012 at 2:43 amyou can’t help yourself getting it wrong: it is not Arctic or Antarctic
In your various [many] graphs on this you always claim that the location where you measure the change is either the South Pole or the North Pole.

lsvalgaard says:
December 26, 2012 at 3:01 am
…….
You and Mosher can read page 13 & 14, there is all you need to know: the data source, method etc.
You also can do calculations and the spectrum plot as shown in Fig. 26, p.14.

There must be some kind of emotional reason why solar enthusiasts refuse to seriously consider the extremely weak nature of their postulates. Maybe they want to be able to say to the world you cannot control climate or weather in any way. We know that Earth can and does affect both weather and climate. Volcanoes can put is into a cool spell for a little while. We can ourselves seed clouds and even just water vapor and make it rain. Maybe this is their fear: Saying that Earth has in itself the stuff and energy necessary to change weather and climate leaves the door open for their opponents to say that CO2 then must have that capacity. Arguing against an emotionally protected point of view can never be won over. Which explains the voracity of opinions held here by both AGWs and solarists.

lsvalgaard says:
December 24, 2012 at 2:36 pm
I agree that there is no game changer but this is because it is IPCC’s ball, not because of semantics on deliberately obfuscatory prose. They already have the orders out for the faithful to write papers supporting the “sky is falling” line by responding to the leak that they will be accepting papers written in 2013. I think skeptical scientists with data showing the sky will stay where it’s supposed to should get writing, not waiting for the anticipated claptrap of rising seas, parched jungles and Antarctic beach volleyball. Having Sentator Kerry appointed as Secretary of CAGW will lift the spirits of a flagging IPCC and of course redouble the funding of a bunch that were getting ready to throw in the towel.

vukcevic says:
December 26, 2012 at 4:04 amYou and Mosher can read page 13 & 14, there is all you need to know
If you cannot explain it here there is little chance that your ‘explanation’ elsewhere will make sense.

Pamela Gray says:
December 26, 2012 at 6:54 am
……..
Number of expert papers consider ‘tidal mixing’ as an important factor in the temperature variability, except they can not agree if stronger tides cause cooling (Keeling) or warming (Munk and R.Ray). Tidal energy dissipation is highest in the far North Atlantic and N. Pacific where the ‘polar amplification’ is the strongest.
If you, or anyone else can find numerical data file for the graph shown in: ftp://ftp.flaterco.com/xtide/tidal_datums_and_their_applications.pdf
page10, it just may be possible to show magnitude of the Earth’s core differential rotation effect (it certainly has required mass available) as derived from the oscillations in the core’s magnetic field fluctuations

3000km diameter of the Earth’s core and specific gravity of the outer core (liquid) 9.9 to 12.2 and the inner core (solid): 12.6 to 13.0 would preclude any significant influence from atmospheric or oceanic circulation. Also the eological records for the N. Atlantic, North and the Central Pacific correlate with the climatic changes, well beyond a volcano or two producing sporadic cooling episodes.

vukcevic says:
December 26, 2012 at 9:05 amI do the data, don’t do the explanations, that is duty of scientists.
The scientists do the data, you have no understanding of the process and get the fundamentals wrong, then chicken out when asked to explain yourself.

(data source and the method are on the page 13)
then put your thinking hat on, else no contest.
But do remember gradient (known as the rate of change) is calculated as [F(t2)-F(t1)]/(t2-t1), we don’t want to go through that all over again.

BTW: Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen arrived at the South Pole on 14 December 1911. He had a compass in his pocket. US Admiral Richard Byrd, flew over the South Pole on November 29, 1928. He also had a compass in his pocket.

vukcevic says:
December 26, 2012 at 9:41 am
>i>you can do the graph first
Many people have done that already, here is a typical result:

No sign of any ‘Hale-period’ related to the secular variation. And you are still [it should be clear why] evading the issue.

BTW: Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen arrived at the South Pole on 14 December 1911. He had a compass in his pocket. US Admiral Richard Byrd, flew over the South Pole on November 29, 1928. He also had a compass in his pocket.
If that is the level of understanding you have of deriving properties of the geomagnetic field for centuries in the past, then no wonder you find spurious things.

And you are still failing to do spectrum of the Earth’s core fluctuation’s as derived from the geo-magnetic field [it should be clear why]..
You look at your graph and conclude ‘nothing there’ to show
I’ll look at my graph and conclude ‘great deal there’ to show.
bye bye

“Their analyses isolated six slow-moving oscillations, or waves of motion, occurring within the liquid core. The oscillations originated at the boundary between Earth’s core and its mantle and traveled inward toward the inner core with decreasing strength. Four of these oscillations were robust, occurring at periods of 85, 50, 35 and 28 years. Since the scientist’s data set goes back to 1840, the recurrence period of the longest oscillation (85 years) is less well determined than the other oscillations. The last two oscillations identified were weaker and will require further study.
The 85- and 50-year oscillations are consistent with a 1997 study by researchers Stephen Zatman and Jeremy Bloxham of Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.”

vukcevic says:
December 26, 2012 at 10:47 amFour of these oscillations were robust, occurring at periods of 85, 50, 35 and 28 years. Since the scientist’s data set goes back to 1840, the recurrence period of the longest oscillation (85 years) is less well determined than the other oscillations. The last two oscillations identified were weaker and will require further study.
Still no Hale-cycles there. Extend your ‘analysis’ to periods longer than 21 years and see if you recover the 28, 23, and 50 year peaks.
You seem to admit that there is no data before 1840 and that therefore the claims you have made for correlation over 1000 years are spurious. What characterizes a pseudo-scientist is the mixing of not-understood snippets.

except that I have a higher resolution spectrum analyser, down to 5 years.
Now, stop fretting about, admit you lost this one, your spec is nonsense, go and do some science and abandon pointless denying.
Sun and Earth can do it, and they indeed do it.
CO2 is good to feed plants and make fizzy drinks but for climate change forget it.

vukcevic says:
December 26, 2012 at 12:05 pmnonsense
What is nonsense is your claims that the changes in the core are caused by the sun, and that the temperatures correlate with secular variation at the South [North] Pole over a thousand years. And you have still not explained what you call the ‘Earth’s Magnetic Field’ as that varies greatly from place to place.

Sun may be, more likely than not, I can’t prove it you can’t disprove it.
Sun and the Earth’s entwined symphony of oscillations creates natural climate undulations, sometimes as agreeable as the most melodic of the Mozart, sometime as dissonant as harshest of the Wagner. Sit back and enjoy it, the humans are too feeble to do anything about it.

vukcevic says:
December 26, 2012 at 12:38 pm“It is at the core-mantle interface”
Where the secular variation looks like this: http://www.leif.org/research/Secular-Variation-at-CMB.png
So, which point did you pick.Are you running away to the poles again?
What is this invention of “1000 years”? I bet you can’t find a quote.
You mean you are busy cleaning up your web-page to cover your tracks?

Bizarre !
Dr.S. : Herewith denied, as there are no data at all from Antarctica before 1957, so spectral analysis is spurious.
And yet shows illustration of variation of the secular magnetic field in the Antarctic since 1840.

The above could only mean that our Dr. S. is really concerned about some of the vukcevic’s geomagnetic findings.Seldom a controversial new hypothesis has succeeded without strong opposition from guardians of the ‘eternal truth’.
Time for another celebratory drink.
Cheers !

vukcevic says:
December 26, 2012 at 2:14 pmsearching god knows for what?
Looking the pages you have frauduently removed.

concerned about some of the vukcevic’s geomagnetic findings.Seldom a controversial new hypothesis has succeeded
Spurious correlations are not ‘findings’.
You ‘new hypothesis’ is not controversial. It belongs in the ‘not even wrong’ category.